Systems and methods for submitting user selected profile information to an advertiser

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods are described herein for allowing a user to grant or deny a third party access to different portions of the user&#39;s profile characteristics. Control circuitry may calculate an optimal promotion offer from a third party to a user based on a first layer of the user&#39;s profile characteristics matching a target-audience profile of the third party. Control circuitry may then generate for display the optimal promotion offer to the user. In response to receiving a selection of the optimal promotion offer from the user, control circuitry may receive further selections, from the user, of a subset of the user&#39;s profile characteristics to share with the third party, and then generate for display, to the user, an actual promotion offer based on the selected subset of profile characteristics.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.15/391,486, filed Dec. 27, 2016, (pending). The disclosure of which ishereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

In related art, merchants profile users based on information known tothose merchants, and target advertisements to those users based on theprofiles of those users. These related art systems, however, do notlocate deficiencies in the information known to those merchants, orrequest information to fill those deficiencies from the users. Inaddition, a user has very little control over if, or how, her profileinformation is used. In some instances, when the user accesses amerchant portal, the user may be asked to “agree” to share her profileinformation in order to continue using the merchant portal's services.However, the user is usually not told with whom the merchant plans toshare her profile information, or under what circumstances will thesharing be carried out. In addition, in such systems in the related art,while the merchant retains flexibility to share the user's profileinformation with multiple advertisers or merchants without having torequest permission from the user again, the advertisers and merchantsare faced with ineffective advertising because they may have to pay foradvertisements presented to users who might have no interest in theirservices or products.

SUMMARY

Systems and methods are provided herein for identifying information thatis not publicly available about a user that would allow a merchant tobetter target a promotion to the user, and for targeting a query to theuser that asks about the identified information. For example, a merchantmay learn from one or more public databases and/or its own privatedatabases about a user's demographic information (e.g., age, gender,etc.), and about a user's preferences (e.g., information that describeswhat a user likes, such as whether a user enjoys playing a particularsport). The merchant may also learn from these databases about a user'sbehavior, such as how a user reacts to certain types of promotions, suchas how a user reacts to a large discount for a certain type of itemversus a small discount for the certain type of item.

The merchant may add this information to a private database where themerchant also stores information known to the merchant based on themerchant's interactions with the user (e.g., purchase history, how auser reacted to the merchant's earlier discounts, etc.). The merchantmay determine, based on combining the information from its private andpublic databases, what further information the merchant could benefitfrom in order to better target promotions to the user. The merchant maythereby create queries for the user that seek out this furtherinformation.

To this end and others, in some aspects of the disclosure, a mediaguidance application may determine an identity of a user accessing amerchant portal, and may access a database accessible to the merchantcomprising a profile corresponding to the user. The media guidanceapplication may retrieve, from the profile of the database, informationabout the user. The information of the publicly available database maycomprise, among other things, (1) demographic information about theuser, (2) preferences of the user, and (3) behavioral information aboutthe user. For example, the media guidance application may determine,based on the information of the publicly available database, that theuser is a male in his thirties, who has purchased multiple sets of skigears over the past five years and has repeatedly dismissedadvertisements on snowboards.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve aplurality of target audience profiles associated with a merchantcorresponding to the merchant portal. The media guidance application maycompare the information about the user to information of each of thetarget audience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles,and may determine, based on the comparing, a first subset of targetaudience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles where afirst threshold amount of the information about the user matches theinformation of a respective target audience profile. The “first subsetof target audience profiles” as used herein refers to one or more targetaudience profiles that match with at least part of the user's profile.In the example above, the media guidance application may determine anumber of target audience profiles that match with “male,” “thirties,”or “ski” and group them as the first subset of target audience profiles.The media guidance application may also determine, based on thecomparing, a second subset of target audience profiles of the pluralityof target audience profiles where a second threshold amount of theinformation about the user is contradictory to the information of therespective target audience profile. The “second subset of targetaudience profiles” as used herein refers to one or more target audienceprofiles that evidently do not match with any part of the user'sprofile. Continuing with the example above, the media guidanceapplication may determine a number of target audience profiles that notonly fail to match with any of the known information about the user, butalso includes “snowboard” as a known preference, and may group thesetarget audience profiles as the second subset. In other words, the firstsubset of target profiles captures definitive matches for the user,whereas the second subset of target profiles captures definitivenon-matches.

The media guidance application may then generate a third subset of thetarget audience profiles by filtering the first subset of the targetaudience profiles and filtering the second subset of the target audienceprofiles from the plurality of target audience profiles. For example,the third subset includes target audience profiles for which furtherinformation about the user is required to determine whether the userfits within the target audience profile. The media guidance applicationmay generate a query for the user that requests information that willenable a given target audience profile of the third subset to be addedto the first subset or to be added to the second subset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may add theinformation about the user to a private database accessible to themerchant, thus supplementing the information the merchant already hadabout the user with publicly available information about the user. Themedia guidance application may receive a reply to the query, and maydetermine a kind of information of the reply by determining whether thereply includes demographic information, preference information, orbehavioral information. The media guidance application may update theinformation about the user by adding the information of the reply to, inthe private database, either the demographic information about the user,the preference information about the user, or the behavioral informationabout the user based on the determination of the kind of information ofthe reply.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may access aknowledge graph. The media guidance application may determine, based oninformation of the knowledge graph, a strength of association betweenthe information of the reply and additional information. In response todetermining that the strength of association exceeds a thresholdstrength of association, the media guidance application may add theadditional information to the private database.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determinewhether the updated information about the user has an amount ofinformation that matches information of the given target audienceprofile of the third subset that meets or exceeds the first thresholdamount of information. In response to determining that the updatedinformation about the user has an amount of information that matchesinformation of the given target audience profile of the third subsetthat meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information, themedia guidance application may provide a promotion to the user for aproduct or service corresponding to the given target audience profile ofthe third subset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may monitor whetherthe user acts on the promotion. In response to determining that the useracts on the promotion, the media guidance application may update thebehavioral information in the private database.

In some embodiments, when updating the behavioral information in theprivate database, the media guidance application may access a knowledgegraph. The media guidance application may determine a strength ofassociation between the updated behavioral information and additionalbehavioral information in the knowledge graph. In response todetermining that the strength of association exceeds a thresholdstrength of association, the media guidance application may furtherupdate the behavioral information to include the additional behavioralinformation.

In some embodiments, further in response to determining that the useracts on the promotion, the media guidance application may determine aset of attributes that correspond to a manner in which the user acted onthe promotion. The media guidance application may compare the set ofattributes to attributes of other target audience profiles of the thirdsubset, and may determine, based on comparing the set of attributes tothe attributes of other target audience profiles of the third subset, afourth subset of target audience profiles. The media guidanceapplication may generate another query for the user that requestsfurther information that will enable a given target audience profile ofthe fourth subset to be added to the first subset or to be added to thesecond subset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare the setof attributes to attributes of target audience profiles of the firstsubset. The media guidance application may determine whether a thresholdamount of the set of attributes do not match the attributes of a giventarget audience profile of the first subset, and, in response todetermining that the threshold amount of the set of attributes do notmatch the attributes of the given target audience profile of the firstsubset, the media guidance application may remove the given targetaudience profile from the first subset and add the given target audienceprofile to the second subset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine, basedon the monitoring, that the user fails to act on the promotion during athreshold period of time. In response to determining that the user failsto act on the promotion during the threshold period of time, the mediaguidance application may add the given target audience profile of thethird subset to the second subset, and may remove the given targetaudience profile of the third subset from the third subset.

In some embodiments, the query is provided to the user by way of aset-top box. For example, the query may be generated for display by themedia guidance application, which is at least partially installed on aset-top box, for display on a television. The query may relate toprogramming presently displayed on the television.

Systems and methods are also provided herein for allowing a user togrant or deny a third party access to different portions of the user'sprofile characteristics. The systems and methods may let the userspecify a number of profile characteristics to be shared with aparticular third party in response to receiving the user's selection ofan offer from the third party. Based on the profile characteristics thatthe user chooses to share with the third party, the systems and methodsmay calculate a promotion offer that is specific to the user and displaythe promotion offer to the user. In this manner, the third party (e.g.,an advertiser or a merchant) may more effectively target users who arelikely to be interested in their products or services, and the user canbetter take control of her own profile information and decide whichportion of the profile to share, with whom, under what circumstances,and in exchange for what promotion.

To these ends and other ends, in some aspects of the disclosure, a mediaguidance application may compare a plurality of layers of profilecharacteristics associated with a user to a target-audience profilesubmitted by a third party. For example, the plurality of layers ofprofile characteristics of the user may include a Basic DemographicInformation layer, a Behavioral layer, and an Online Profile layer. Themedia guidance application may compare the plurality of layers against atarget audience profile submitted by a business, such as “CityAthletics”, a hypothetical store that specializes in sports gears inurban centers. In this example, the target audience profile may indicatethat the business prefers to target users who are 20-30 years old livingin an urban environment, have at least a college degree, and whoseshopping histories indicate that they love shopping for sports goods ingeneral.

In some embodiments, in response to determining that a first layer ofthe plurality of layers matches the target audience profile, the mediaguidance application may calculate an optimal promotion offer from thethird party based on the first layer of profile characteristics, andgenerate for display the optimal promotion offer to the user. Forexample, the media guidance application may determine that Amy, whoselayer of basic demographic information indicates that she is a23-year-old graduate student living in New York City, has a first layerthat matches the target-audience profile that City Athletics wishes totarget. In response to the determination, the media guidance applicationmay calculate that the optimal promotion City Athletics is willing tooffer to Amy is a 20% discount based on her demographic information asreflected in her matching Basic Demographic Information layer.Subsequently, the media guidance application may generate the optimalpromotion offer for display to Amy, e.g., “Amy, you can save as much as20% by shopping at City Athletics now!” as a banner advertisement whenAmy searches for sports goods, or visits any other merchant portal wheresuch an advertisement can be placed. In some embodiments, thecalculation of optimal promotion offer may be performed by the thirdparty instead of the media guidance application. In some otherembodiments, the media guidance application may calculate the optimalpromotion offer for the user according to some rules set forth by thethird party ahead of time.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may have littleinformation on the user prior to the user browsing the web page, and theforegoing matching may not happen instantaneously. In these embodiments,the media guidance application may incentivize the user to select orshare profile information by way of a notification message. The mediaguidance application may generate the notification message as a popupwindow, an alert box, a short video, a sound, a text message, a web pageallowing the user to enter profile information, or any other means toincentivize the user to share profile information. For example, if themedia guidance application knows very little about Amy's profile whenAmy first opens the web page of City Athletics, the media guidanceapplication may not determine whether Amy's profile matches the targetaudience profile at this stage. Instead, the media guidance applicationmay allow Amy to enter a plurality of her profile characteristics (e.g.,profile characteristics in a particular layer) to share, in real time,with City Athletics in exchange for instantaneous discounts. In someembodiments, the real-time nature of the present disclosure may allowthe user to select profile characteristics to share with a particularthird party advertiser or merchant and receive a response in the form ofa personalized discount from the third party advertiser or merchant, atsubstantially the same time.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive a firstselection of the optimal promotion offer from the user. In response toreceiving the first selection, the media guidance application maygenerate for display the first layer of profile characteristics to theuser, whereby each profile characteristic of the first layer may have acorresponding selectable option to grant the third party access to itscorresponding profile characteristic. For example, in response toreceiving a selection of the banner advertisement from Amy, the mediaguidance application may generate for display to her each and everyprofile characteristic from the “Basic Demographic Information” layer asselectable options, such as a selectable option for the profilecharacteristic “Age,” a selectable option for the profile characteristic“Address,” a selectable option for the profile characteristic“Education,” and a selectable option for the profile characteristic“Gender.” Amy may select one or more of these selectable options toindicate her permission to grant City Athletics access to herinformation in a corresponding profile characteristic.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive a secondselection from the user to grant the third party access to a subset ofthe profile characteristics within the first layer of profilecharacteristics. For example, the media guidance application may receiveselections from Amy to grant City Athletics access to the profilecharacteristics “Age,” “Education,” and “Gender,” but not “Address.” Inthis manner, Amy has granted City Athletics access to her age(23-year-old), education level (college), and gender (female)information, while denying City Athletics access to her address in NewYork City.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate anactual promotion offer from the third party for the user based on thesubset of profile characteristics which the user has granted the thirdparty access to. In some other embodiments, such as when the mediaguidance application did not have much information about the user at thebeginning, the media guidance application may calculate the actualpromotion offer by comparing the selected subset of profilecharacteristics against the target audience profiles defined by thethird party in the target audience profile. In some embodiments, theactual promotion offer, which corresponds to the actual profilecharacteristics shared with the third party, is not greater than theoptimal promotion offer, which corresponds to the maximum amount ofprofile characteristics that can be shared with the third party. In someembodiments, the actual promotion offer is not based on any profilecharacteristics outside of the selected subset. In some furtherembodiments, the actual promotion offer can be based on any profilecharacteristics in the subset that the user has selected, within oroutside of the first layer of profile characteristics. Continuing withthe examples from above, the subset of profile characteristics that Amyhas selected includes “Age,” “Education,” and “Gender” information, butdoes not include “Address” information. Although the optimal promotionoffer City Athletics would have been able to offer to Amy is 20% had Amyselected to share all four, the media guidance application may calculatean actual promotion offer of 15% because Amy only selected to share herage, education, and gender information, but not her address information.In some embodiments, the calculation of actual promotion offer may beperformed by the third party instead of the media guidance application.In some other embodiments, the media guidance application may calculatethe actual promotion offer for the user according to some rules setforth by the third party ahead of time.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may generate fordisplay the actual promotion offer to the user. For example, the mediaguidance application may generate the 15% promotion offer and present itto Amy by displaying an advertising statement: “Amy, based on theinformation you shared with City Athletics, your store-wide discount forshopping there is 15%!”

In some embodiments, the media guidance application calculates theoptimal promotion offer from the third party assuming that the user hasgranted the third party access to a predetermined subset of profilecharacteristics within the first layer. In some embodiments, thepredetermined subset of profile characteristics corresponds to some orall profile characteristics associated with the user that the thirdparty does not yet know from other sources (e.g., from the publicdatabase). For example, the media guidance application may calculate theoptimal promotion offer of 20% for Amy with the assumption that she hadgranted City Athletics access to a predetermined subset of profilecharacteristics in her “Basic Demographic Information” layer—i.e.,“Age,” “Education,” “Gender,” and “Address.” In some embodiments, themedia guidance application calculates the optimal promotion offer fromthe third party based on the predetermined subset of matching profilecharacteristics that the user has relative to the target-audienceprofile established by the third party, throughout every layer. Forexample, the media guidance application may calculate the optimalpromotion offer of 20% for Amy based on not only the “Basic DemographicInformation” layer characteristics of Amy, but also her “Behavioral”layer characteristics that match the target-audience profile establishedby City Athletics.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may receive thesecond selection from the user to grant the third party access to boththe subset of the profile characteristics within the first layer andprofile characteristics within a second layer of profilecharacteristics, even if the matching was only based on the user'sselection of the profile characteristics within the first layer. Forexample, the media guidance application may receive from Amy selectionsof “Age,” “Education,” and “Gender,” which belong to the subset of theprofile characteristics of the first layer, as well as “ShoppingPreferences,” which belong to the “Behavioral Layer” of her profilecharacteristics. In this way, even though the matching was based onAmy's profile characteristics in her “Basic Demographic InformationLayer,” she might choose to grant City Athletics access to additionalprofile characteristic(s) in her “Behavioral Layer” in exchange forhigher potential discount from the City Athletics.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate theactual promotion offer from the third party based on both the subset ofprofile characteristics within the first layer and a further subset ofprofile characteristics within the second layer. For example, the mediaguidance application may take into account Amy's selections to grantCity Athletics access to both her “Age” and “Education” profilecharacteristics in the “Basic Demographic Information Layer” and the“Shopping Preferences” profile characteristic in the “Behavioral Layer”when calculating the actual promotion offer from City Athletics. Asbefore, the calculation of the actual promotion offer may be performedby the third party instead of the media guidance application in someembodiments. In some further embodiments, the media guidance applicationmay calculate the actual promotion offer for the user according to somerules set forth by the third party ahead of time.

The media guidance application may, in some embodiments, generate fordisplay the actual promotion offer by displaying a targetedadvertisement for a product associated with the user's profilecharacteristics. For example, rather than offering a store-wide discountof 15% to Amy, the media guidance application may generate for display a20% discount on all skiing gears for Amy at City Athletics, which areassociated with certain profile information from Amy, or are associatedwith the season, time of the year, weather, etc.

In some embodiments, in response to receiving a selection from the userto dismiss the optimal promotion offer, the media guidance applicationmay reduce the probability of generating future promotion offersassociated with the third party. For example, Amy may not be interestedin the 20% optimal promotion offer from City Athletics and chooses todismiss the banner advertisement by clicking on a “dismiss” option forthe advertisement. In some embodiments, the media guidance applicationmay take this as an indication that Amy is not interested in promotionoffers from City Athletics at present, and reduce the probability ofgenerating future promotion offers from City Athletics from once perweek to once per month. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may learn from the user's consecutive dismissals ofpromotion offers from a particular third party over time and understandthat the user does not wish to see advertisements from the third partyagain. For example, the media guidance application may set a thresholdnumber of dismissals and determine that the user's prior dismissalsexceeded the threshold. As a result, the media guidance application mayrefrain from generating future promotion offers from that particularthird party to the user again.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate theactual promotion offer by extracting a plurality of targetcharacteristics from the target-audience profile submitted by the thirdparty; counting a number of profile characteristics from the subset thatmatches the plurality of target characteristics; and calculating amatching score for the user based on the number of matching profilecharacteristics in the subset. For example, from the target audienceprofile of someone who is 20-30 years old living in an urban environmentand whose shopping history indicates that she love shopping for sportsgears, the media guidance application may extract four targetcharacteristics—“Age,” “Education,” “Address,” and “ShoppingPreference”—for City Athletics. The media guidance application maycompare the target characteristics against the user's profilecharacteristics and count a number of profile characteristics thatmatches the target. In this case, although Amy's profile characteristicsinclude “Age,” “Education,” “Gender,” and “Address,” only three of theseare included in the subset previously selected by Amy, i.e., “Age,”“Education,” and “Gender.” Comparing the subset of Amy's three profilecharacteristics against the four target characteristics from CityAthletics, the media guidance application will count only two of Amy'sprofile characteristics—“Age” and “Education”—as matching. Subsequently,the media guidance application may calculate a matching score for Amybased on the two matching profile characteristics. The matching score,in some embodiments, is just a sum of the number of matching profilecharacteristics. In the above example, the matching score for Amy underthis binary-scoring system is 2. In some other embodiments, the mediaguidance application may use a suitable algorithm, such as thosediscussed below, to calculate the matching score.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate thematching score based on a degree of matching between a targetcharacteristic and a corresponding profile characteristic of the user's.For example, in a non-binary scoring system (i.e., for eachcharacteristic, there can be more than two possible outcomes), the mediaguidance application may determine a sub-score to each profilecharacteristic. The sub-score measures the degree of matching betweenthe target characteristic and the corresponding profile characteristic.In some embodiments, the assigned score may be provided by the thirdparty. For example, City Athletics may sub-divide its target audienceprofile of “Age” (i.e., 20-30 years old) into five sub-scores, anddirect the media guidance application to assign a sub-score of 5 tousers who are 20 and 21, a sub-score of 2 to users who are 22 and 23, .. . and a sub-score of 3 to users who are 28, 29, and 30. In thisexample, Amy, who is 23 years old, will have a sub-score of 2 for hermatching “Age” profile characteristic. Assuming Amy receives a sub-scoreof 5 for her “Education” profile characteristic that matched the targetaudience profile from City Athletics, her matching score for CityAthletics would be 7, by adding 2 (for “Age”) and 5 (for “Education”).In some embodiments, the sub-scores reflect the third party's targetaudience profile in multiple dimensions. In this manner, the third partyis not limited to defining a single target audience profile, and can beflexible in refining its target audience characteristics to bettertarget receptive users.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate thematching score for the user based on a weighted average of the matchingprofile characteristics in the subset. For example, the media guidanceapplication may assign a weight to each of Amy's matching profilecharacteristics—“Age” and ‘Education”—and calculate the matching scorebased on the weighted average of the two. If City Athletics determinesthat having a college degree is a stronger indicator of someone'sinterest in its products than her age, for instance, City Athletics maydirect the media guidance application to assign a higher weight (e.g.,60%) to the “Education” profile characteristic and a lower weight (e.g.,40%) to the “Age” profile characteristic in the event of a match. Inthis manner, following the above examples, Amy will receive a matchingscore of 3.8, by adding 3.0 (calculated from 60% multiplied by the scoreof 5, for “Education”) and 0.8 (calculated from 40% multiplied by thescore of 2, for “Age”). These and any other suitable algorithms forcomputing the matching score are within the scope of this disclosure.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate theactual promotion offer by determining a maximum matching score for theuser corresponding to the optimal promotion offer attainable by thatuser. The media guidance application may compare the matching scoreagainst the maximum matching score to calculate a percentage value, andmultiply the percentage value with the optimal promotion offer to obtainthe actual promotion offer for the user. For example, based on the threetarget characteristics that Amy has (“Age,” “Address,” and “Education”),the media guidance application may determine that the maximum matchingscore attainable by a user like Amy is 15, which corresponds to theoptimal promotion offer, i.e., 20%. The media guidance application maycompare Amy's matching score (i.e., 7) against the maximum matchingscore (i.e., 15) to calculate a percentage value. In this example, thepercentage value would be 46.7%. The media guidance application maysubsequently multiply the percentage value with the optimal promotionoffer to obtain an actual promotion offer, i.e., 9.3%, for Amy. In someembodiments, the actual promotion offer may be rounded. For instance, inthe above example, Amy's actual promotion offer will be 10%.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may includeadditional profile characteristics selected by the user in calculatingthe actual promotion offer. For example, the media guidance applicationmay take into account Amy's selection of “Shopping Preferences” incalculating the actual promotion offer for her.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may calculate themaximum matching score corresponding to the optimal promotion offerattainable by any user the third party wishes to target, rather than theoptimal promotion offer attainable by the particular user at issue. Insuch cases, the third party may calculate the optimal promotion offer byassuming a hypothetical user has granted the third party access to apredetermined subset of profile characteristics within thetarget-audience profile. For example, City Athletics from the aboveexamples may calculate the optimal promotion offer by assuming ahypothetical user has granted it access to “Age,” “Address,”“Education,” as well as “Shopping Preference” profile characteristics.That optimal promotion offer may, for example, be 25%. Subsequently, themedia guidance application may determine the actual promotion offer fora particular user based on this optimal promotion offer using adifferent percentage value.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application dynamically updatesthe displayed actual promotion offer based on the user's selections ofprofile characteristics in real time. For example, upon entering themerchant portal of City Athletics, Amy may decide that she wants toenjoy a higher discount and chooses to additionally share her “Address”profile characteristic with City Athletics as well. The media guidanceapplication may receive this information and dynamically update theactual promotion offer for Amy, in real time, such that her actualpromotion offer increases from 10% to 15%.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may not rely on aweighted score system to determine the actual promotion offer, and mayinstead accumulate the actual promotion offer based on the selections ofthe user. In these embodiments, the actual promotion offer may exceedthe optimal promotion offer as determined by the third party merchant oradvertiser. The media guidance application may allow the actualpromotion offer to exceed the optimal promotion offer set by the thirdparty, or, in the alternative, the media guidance application mayprovide non-monetary perks to compensate the user for sharing additionallayers of profile data. For example, if the optimal promotion offer asdetermined by the target audience profile is 30%, and the user haselected to share a large number of layers of profile data such that theactual promotion offer as calculated by the media guidance applicationwould be 40%, the media guidance application may grant the 40% discountto the user (e.g., by offering to compensate the third party merchantthe 10% difference). Alternatively, the media guidance application mayallow the user to take up the optimal 30% discount while offering a freeon-demand video item or other similar giveaways to the user, in order toincentivize the user to engage in future data-sharing activities on theplatform.

It should be noted that the systems, methods, apparatuses, and/oraspects described above may be applied to, or used in accordance with,other systems, methods, apparatuses, and/or aspects described in thisdisclosure.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a user interface thatinforms a user about a potential promotion offer from a third party, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 2 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a user interface thatallows a user to choose profile characteristics to share with a thirdparty, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 3 depicts an illustrative embodiment of an interface that allows athird party to define a target audience profile, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 4 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a user interface thatinforms a user about an actual promotion offer from a third party, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 5 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a display screen that maybe used to provide media guidance application listings and other mediaguidance information, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 6 depicts another illustrative embodiment of a display screen thatmay be used to provide media guidance application listings, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 7 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a display screen thatpresents an advertisement and other interactive elements as part of amedia guidance application, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 8 depicts another illustrative embodiment of a display screen thatpresents an advertisement and other interactive elements as part of amedia guidance application, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 9 is a block diagram of an illustrative device in accordance withsome embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 10 is a block diagram of an illustrative media system in accordancewith some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 11 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for allowing auser to grant or deny a third party access to different portions of theuser's profile characteristics, in accordance with some embodiments ofthe disclosure;

FIG. 12 depicts an illustrative flowchart of a process for enabling auser to exchange portions of profile characteristics for promotionoffers from a third party, and enabling the third party to target theuser more effectively, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure;

FIG. 13 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in generating aquery for requesting information that will enable a determination ofwhether a user definitively fits or does not fit a target audienceprofile, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure;

FIG. 14 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in generating aquery for requesting information that will enable a target audienceprofile to be classified either into a fits the user subset or does notfit the user subset, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure; and

FIG. 15 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in determining,based on a user's response to a promotion associated with a targetaudience profile, another promotion associated with another targetaudience profile for presentation to the user, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The term “merchant portal” as used herein is defined to mean anyelectronic interface between a user and a merchant, including but notlimited to a web page and an application interface, which can bedisplayed on any user equipment, such as a smartphone, a television, aset-top box, a personal computer, a tablet, or any other user equipmentas described in relation to FIG. 10 below.

FIG. 1 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a user interface thatinforms a user about a potential promotion offer from a third party, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. User interface 100as depicted in FIG. 1 may be a merchant portal generated by a mediaguidance application running on processing circuitry 906 and displayedon display 912 of FIG. 9. Alternatively, user interface 100 may be amerchant portal generated by the media guidance application running at aremote server and displayed on display 912 of FIG. 9. In someembodiments, the illustrative embodiment as shown in FIG. 1 may beoptional, as will be made apparent in the disclosure below.

User interface 100 may be a web page or a television guidance interfacethat a user visits when the user is accessing the media guidanceapplication. In some embodiments, user interface 100 is a media guidanceinterface (i.e., a merchant portal) of a merchant, who provides productsand services, as well as advertising, to users. In such embodiments,user interface 100 may be generated by a set-top box and displayed on atelevision associated with the set-top box. In some embodiments, userinterface 100 is a web page of a central exchange that brokers promotiondeals between a user and a third party advertiser or merchant. In suchsystems, a media guidance application of the central exchange generatesuser interfaces 100 and 400 for display for the user and user interface300 for the third party business. The media guidance application maykeep the user and the third party business decoupled from each othersuch that targeted users are identified for a third party advertiser ormerchant without revealing private information about the user in theabsence of the user's explicit consent in real time. In some otherembodiments, user interface 100 is an interface of a media guidanceapplication running on servers of a third party advertiser or merchant,or a type of interface running on a proprietary application of the thirdparty advertiser or merchant. In such systems, the media guidanceapplication running on the third party servers generates user interfaces100 and 400 for display for the user. In some embodiments in accordancewith the present disclosure, the central exchange may be centralexchange 1015 and the third party may be merchant 1017 or advertisementprovider 1019 of FIG. 10. In some embodiments, central exchange 1015 maybe part of media content source 1016 or media guidance data source 1018;merchant 1017 and advertisement provider 1019 may be part of mediacontent source 1016, as will be illustrated below in relation to FIG.10.

On user interface 100 of FIG. 1, the media guidance application locatedat either the central exchange or the third party merchant may displayLabel 102 which corresponds to the user's identity. In some embodiments,the user logs onto her account with the media guidance application inorder to have label 102 displayed as illustrated. Label 104 indicatesthe URL of the web page or the identity of the third party merchanthosting user interface 100. In this illustrative embodiment, label 104indicates that this interface belongs to City Athletics, a hypotheticalstore that specializes in sports gears in urban centers.

In some embodiments, a media guidance application running on the centralexchange or the third party merchant may determine an identity of a useraccessing a merchant portal. For example, as depicted in FIG. 1, themedia guidance application may identify user 102 as Amy. In someembodiments, the media guidance application determines the identity ofthe user based on explicit input by the user. For example, the user mayinput credentials into the media guidance application (e.g., a user nameand, optionally, a password), and the media guidance application maydetermine the identity of the user based on those credentials.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application does not receiveexplicit input by the user that identifies the user. In such cases, themedia guidance application may identify the user using various userinput interfaces (described below with respect to FIGS. 9 and 10. Forexample, the media guidance application may detect speech from the user,or an image from the user, and may use speech recognition or imagerecognition algorithms to identify the identity of the user.Alternatively, the media guidance application may use information aboutuser equipment through which the user is accessing the merchant portal(e.g., network address, cookies, MAC address, or any other identifyinginformation) to identify the identity of the user. In some embodiments,user equipment may be shared, in which case the term “identity of theuser” refers to an identity of a household (or other entity) that sharesthe user equipment.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may access adatabase that is accessible to the merchant comprising a profilecorresponding to the user. Databases, such as a media guidance datasource, or local storage of user equipment, as well as profiles storedthereon, are described below with reference to FIG. 10. A databaseaccessible to the merchant is defined herein as a database includinginformation that is either paid for or for free, which is accessible toa willing merchant. In some embodiments, the database accessible to themerchant is a public database accessible to all merchants. In someembodiments, the database accessible to the merchant is a database thatis private to said merchant, which may in turn be accessible by otherthird party merchants for a fee or via other arrangements. The mediaguidance application may retrieve, from the profile of the database,information about the user. The information of the publicly availabledatabase may comprise, among other things, (1) demographic informationabout the user, (2) preferences of the user, and (3) behavioralinformation about the user.

As used herein, the term “demographic information” refers to informationabout a user that describes definitive, unambiguous, factual data aboutthe user, such as an age or gender of the user. As used herein, the term“preferences of the user” describes, for example, data about a user thatreflect what a user enjoys or does not enjoy, or what a user habituallydoes or does not do. Preferences of a user may be subject to change, andmay be subject to some ambiguity in that the preferences of a user maybe less granular than the demographic information about that user. Forexample, if a user is age 39, there is no ambiguity about the age of theuser. However, if a user enjoys skiing, it may be unknown whether theuser enjoys skiing beginner slopes, or advanced slopes, or whether theuser enjoys downhill skiing as opposed to cross-country skiing.

As used herein, the term “behavioral information” refers to informationabout how a user reacts to certain stimuli. For example, behavioralinformation would include information about how a user reacted to aspecific promotion relating to a product or service. As used herein, theterm “promotion” refers to an incentive to perform a desired action. Apromotion may entail a discount for the desired action or for adifferent activity if the desired action is performed, an administrationof a free service in exchange for the performance of the desired action,a gift in exchange for the performance of the desired action, or anyother financial or non-financial benefit that would be conferred on theuser in exchange for the user's performance of the desired action.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may retrieve aplurality of target audience profiles associated with a merchantcorresponding to the merchant portal. For example, the merchant may be asporting goods store called REI, which sells recreational sporting goodsand services for a large variety of sports. The media guidanceapplication may retrieve target audience profiles for each good andservice that REI sells, such as target audience profiles for specificskiing equipment, specific tennis equipment, and for a vacation packageto go skiing that is offered by REI including hotel accommodations,skiing tickets, and skiing equipment rentals. The term “target audienceprofile” as used herein defines a profile of the merchant's idealshopper for a particular item. For example, an ideal shopper for a setof high-end skis would be a person who has enough money to purchase theskis, who has enough experience to benefit from high end skis, and whohas preference data that indicates that the user actually skis, andperhaps that the user skis at a very high level and could thus benefitfrom the high-end skis.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare theinformation about the user to information of each of the target audienceprofiles of the plurality of target audience profiles, and maydetermine, based on the comparing, a first subset of target audienceprofiles of the plurality of target audience profiles where a firstthreshold amount of the information about the user matches theinformation of a respective target audience profile. For example, if auser profile reflects that the user enjoys playing tennis, and is silenton the user's affinity toward skiing, the media guidance application mayadd tennis equipment to the first subset, because the user may satisfy atarget audience profile for the tennis equipment and thus be a goodcandidate to advertise the tennis equipment to.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine, basedon the comparing, a second subset of target audience profiles of theplurality of target audience profiles where a second threshold amount ofthe information about the user is contradictory to the information ofthe respective target audience profile. For example, if the behavioralinformation of the user profile reflects that the user consistentlydeclines vacation packages (e.g., because the user likes to organize hisown trips from scratch), the media guidance application may determinethat the user is unlikely to purchase the vacation package. Thus, themedia guidance application may add the target audience profile for thevacation package to the second subset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may generate a thirdsubset of the target audience profiles by filtering out the first subsetof the target audience profiles and filtering out the second subset ofthe target audience profiles from the plurality of target audienceprofiles. Following from the above example, the media guidanceapplication already has enough information to know that the user is anideal candidate to be exposed to a promotion about tennis, and the mediaguidance application already has enough information to know that theuser is very far from an ideal candidate to be exposed to a promotionabout a vacation package. Thus, the media guidance application does notrequire additional information to determine whether to offer the user apromotion relating to the vacation package or to the tennis equipment.However, the media guidance application does not, from the publiclyavailable information, have enough information to determine whether theuser is a good candidate to be offered a promotion about skiingequipment, and thus a target audience profile for the skiing equipmentmay be added to the third subset.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may add theinformation about the user to a private database accessible to themerchant (such as user profile database 1013), thus supplementing theinformation the merchant already had about the user with publiclyavailable information about the user. For example, as described above,the merchant may keep a database that logs activity between the user andthe merchant. For example, purchases by the user, the user's activitywhen accessing the merchant portal associated with the merchant, howoften the user visits the merchant's physical store, how long the userbrowses the merchant's physical store and/or merchant portal, or anyother interaction between the user and the merchant, may be logged in aprivate database. The private database may be supplemented withinformation available from the public database to form a more robustprivate database.

The media guidance application may generate a query corresponding to atarget audience profile of the third subset. For example, following fromthe above example about the REI sporting good store, the media guidanceapplication may seek to supplement its data in order to determinewhether the user is likely to purchase the skiing equipment if theskiing equipment were promoted. Thus, the media guidance application maygenerate a query that asks “Do you enjoy skiing?” or “Would you considerbuying skis?”

The media guidance application may generate the queries based ontemplate queries. For example, the merchant or a third party affiliatedwith the merchant may populate a database with template queries (e.g.,“Would you consider buying [product]?”), where portions of the queriesmay be filled in depending on metadata associated with the product orservice that the query relates to. The media guidance application mayalternatively access non-variable queries in the database, each of whichare affirmatively associated with an individual product. As an example,the target audience profile for skiing equipment may have an associationstored in the database with one or more queries, such as “Would youconsider buying skiing equipment?” Example queries are described withreference to FIGS. 2-3 and 7-8 below.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may entice a user toreply to a query. For example, the media guidance application may offerthe user a promotion (e.g., advertisement 120 or advertisement 130) inexchange for the user replying to the query. Such promotional offers aredescribed in further detail below.

The media guidance application may receive a reply to the query, and maydetermine a kind of information of the reply by determining whether thereply includes demographic information, preference information, orbehavioral information. The media guidance application may determinewhich kind of information is included in the reply to the query based onmetadata associated with the query. For example, a query may beassociated with metadata that indicates whether it is asking a questionrelating to demographics, or whether it is asking a question relating topreference. The media guidance application may update the informationabout the user by adding the information of the reply to, in the privatedatabase, either the demographic information about the user, thepreference information about the user, or the behavioral informationabout the user based on the determination of the kind of information ofthe reply.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may access aknowledge graph stored in a local database, such as user profiledatabase 1013 of FIG. 10. In some embodiments, the knowledge graph isstored in the cloud and is accessible via the Internet. The mediaguidance application may determine, based on information of theknowledge graph, a strength of association between the information ofthe reply and additional information. In response to determining thatthe strength of association exceeds a threshold strength of association,the media guidance application may add the additional information to theprivate database. Knowledge graphs and their features are described ingreater detail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/501,504, filedSep. 30, 2014, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/500,309, filed Sep.29, 2014, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/448,308, filed Jul.31, 2014, which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in theirentireties. The threshold strength of association may be defined by dataof the knowledge graph, or by an editor of the media guidanceapplication (e.g., by a merchant).

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determinewhether the updated information about the user has an amount ofinformation that matches information of the given target audienceprofile of the third subset that meets or exceeds the first thresholdamount of information. In other words, after the media guidanceapplication receives a reply to the query about ski equipment, the mediaguidance application may determine whether it now knows whether the userfits or does not fit the target audience profile for the ski equipment,or whether further information is required. If further information isrequired, the media guidance application may prompt the user withfurther queries (and potentially with further promotions for answeringthose queries).

In some embodiments, in response to determining that the updatedinformation about the user has an amount of information that matchesinformation of the given target audience profile of the third subsetthat meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information, themedia guidance application may provide a promotion to the user for aproduct or service corresponding to the given target audience profile ofthe third subset. For example, the media guidance application may targetan advertisement to the user because the user fits the target audienceprofile of the ski equipment based on the user's answer to the query.Targeted advertisements and their features are described in greaterdetail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/252,744, filed Apr. 14,2014; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/905,467, filed Oct. 15, 2010;and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/140,960, filed Dec. 26, 2013,which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entireties.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may monitor whetherthe user acts on a given promotion. For example, the media guidanceapplication may determine whether the user acts on either a promotiongiven in exchange for replying to a query, or to a promotion given basedon a targeted advertisement that is targeted because the user isdetermined to fit within a target audience profile of the product orservice being promoted. In response to determining that the user acts onthe promotion, the media guidance application may update the behavioralinformation in the private database. For example, the behavioraldatabase may be updated with both the fact that the user acts on thepromotion, as well as other information, such as the manner in which theuser acted on the promotion (e.g., did the user purchase the product orservice through the merchant portal, or did the user go to a physicalstore of the merchant to purchase the product or service), the timetaken before the user acted on the promotion (e.g., did the userpurchase it immediately, or did the user take a week before acting onthe promotion), and the like.

In response to determining that the user does not act on the promotion,the media guidance application may also update the behavioralinformation in the private database based on subsequent actions taken bythe user. For example, a female tennis player may be offered a discountfor tennis supplies but, instead of purchasing tennis-related items, shepurchases a pair of ballet shoes. The media guidance application maythen update the behavioral information to indicate that the user haspurchased ballet shoes, which may cause the media guidance applicationto take further actions (e.g., send the user a questionnaire asking ifthe purchase is a gift or is for herself). In some embodiments, themedia guidance application may correlate the user's actions subsequentto being offered the promotion with another layer of information, anddetermine further inferential knowledge about the user. For example, themedia guidance application may correlate the user's purchase of balletshoes (in her behavioral layer) with her gender (in her basicdemographic information layer) and deduce that the user is also a balletdancer, based on third-party statistical information that shows thereare more female ballet dancers than there are male ballet dancers.

Additionally, in some embodiments, when updating the behavioralinformation in the private database, the media guidance application mayaccess a knowledge graph, and may determine a strength of associationbetween the updated behavioral information and additional behavioralinformation in the knowledge graph (as described above). In response todetermining that the strength of association exceeds a thresholdstrength of association, the media guidance application may furtherupdate the behavioral information to include the additional behavioralinformation. For example, if the user acted on a 20% discount on theskiing equipment, the knowledge graph may indicate that the user islikely to act on a 20% discount on related equipment, such as a helmetfor skiing, and this may be added to the profile of the user.

In some embodiments, further in response to determining that the useracts on the promotion, the media guidance application may determine aset of attributes that correspond to a manner in which the user acted onthe promotion. The media guidance application may compare the set ofattributes to attributes of other target audience profiles of the thirdsubset, and may determine, based on comparing the set of attributes tothe attributes of other target audience profiles of the third subset, afourth subset of target audience profiles. The media guidanceapplication may generate another query for the user that requestsfurther information that will enable a given target audience profile ofthe fourth subset to be added to the first subset or to be added to thesecond subset.

For example, the media guidance application, if the user purchases theskiing equipment, may prompt the user with a query such as “Did you buythe skiing equipment for yourself”? If the user replies “No,” then themedia guidance application may determine that the user in fact is not agood candidate to purchase additional skiing equipment. The mediaguidance application may provide further prompts to the user, such as“Did you buy the skiing equipment for a family member”? If the useranswers yes, then the media guidance application may determine atremendous amount of additional information about the user, such as, forexample, that the user has a son, if the skiing equipment is designedfor a male, child skier. The media guidance application may use theknowledge graph as described above to supplement the profile of the useron the private database with such inferences.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may compare theattributes to attributes of target audience profiles of the firstsubset. The media guidance application may determine whether a thresholdamount of the attributes do not match the attributes of a given targetaudience profile of the first subset, and, in response to determiningthat the threshold amount of the attributes do not match the attributesof the given target audience profile of the first subset, the mediaguidance application may remove the given target audience profile fromthe first subset and add the given target audience profile to the secondsubset. For example, the media guidance application may have initiallyconcluded that the user fits a target audience profile for tennisequipment. However, the media guidance application may come todetermine, based on the user's answer to the queries, that the useractually does not like tennis, and that the tennis equipment waspurchased for a family member. Thus, it is unlikely that the user willcontinue to purchase more tennis equipment, and the media guidanceapplication may refrain from advertising tennis equipment to the user inthe future by removing an association between the target audienceprofile for the tennis equipment and the profile of the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may determine, basedon the monitoring, that the user fails to act on the promotion during athreshold period of time. In response to determining that the user failsto act on the promotion during the threshold period of time, the mediaguidance application may add the given target audience profile of thethird subset to the second subset, and may remove the given targetaudience profile of the third subset from the third subset. For example,the media guidance application may give the user a targetedadvertisement of a discount of 20% to purchase skiing equipment. If theuser does not act on the discount by the time the promotion expires, themedia guidance application may conclude that the user does not likeskiing, and may refrain from advertising skiing equipment to the usergoing forward.

There are several ways for the user to arrive at user interface 100. Forexample, the user may be performing a search for “sports goods” on apopular search engine, and is directed to user interface 100 undercityathletics.com after clicking on a link from the search results. Asanother example, the user may be logged into her account using the mediaguidance application of the central exchange to view today's hot deals,and is presented with user interface 100 where various advertisements,or deals, are presented.

When the media guidance application generates user interface 100 fordisplay to the user, the user may click on any of advertisements 110,120, and 130 to view offers specifically for her. The advertisements maycorrespond to online deals, such as discounts and rebates for onlineshopping. For example, if the media guidance application receives aselection of advertisement 120 from the user, the user may be presentedwith a discount of “up to $5.00 off” that goes towards purchasing theproduct “Baseball (1 Dozen)” online. The advertisements may additionallycorrespond to offline discounts, such as a coupon to be redeemed at aphysical store. For example, if the media guidance application receivesa selection of advertisement 110 from the user, the user may bepresented a coupon with value of “up to 20% off” at a nearby theatre.

In some embodiments, some advertisements displayed may be nativeadvertisements from the third party merchant itself, whereas otheradvertisements may be unrelated to the third party's business. Forexample, if user interface 100 is being hosted at the third party'sservers, i.e., City Athletics, at www.CityAthletics.com, advertisements120 and 130 may relate to products sold at the online store of CityAthletics, whereas advertisement 110 is related to discount coupons formovie theatres and unrelated to the business of City Athletics.

In some embodiments, advertisements 110, 120, and 130 may eachcorrespond to an optimal promotion offer generated specifically for theuser, based on the user's profile. In some embodiments, the optimalpromotion offer for the user may be a maximum promotion offer that isattainable by the user. In some other embodiments, the optimal promotionoffer may represent a promotion offer that is otherwise suitable for theuser's overall profile without necessarily being the highest promotionoffer attainable. For example, the media guidance application maygenerate for display a promotion offer of “10% off” as the optimalpromotion offer for the user even though the maximum attainablepromotion offer for the user is at 20%, because the user's shoppinghistory indicates that the user is most likely to complete a purchasewhen the promotion offered is between 5% and 15%. In another example,the media guidance application may offer 10% as the optimal promotionoffer instead of the maximum attainable offer of 15% because the smallerdiscount would allow the third party advertiser or merchant to affordmore convenient services, such as “free shipping and returns,” which theuser's profile reflects as being more valuable than a 5% additionaldiscount to the user. In still a further example, the media guidanceapplication may offer “buy one get one free” instead of the usualdiscount offers because the user's profile indicates that she has higherpropensity to complete an order when a free item is offered, as comparedto a discount is offered.

In some other embodiments, the user's profile may not be available tothe media guidance application. Consequently, the media guidanceapplication may not generate advertisements 110, 120, or 130, or maygenerate them as regular advertisements for display without auser-specific message such as “your discount.” In these embodiments, themedia guidance application may generate a notification message in placeof advertisements 110, 120, and 130 to incentivize the user to shareadditional profile characteristics. For example, the media guidanceapplication may generate a notification message in place ofadvertisement 110: “Amy, tell us about yourself and receive promotionoffers customized to your needs.” In some embodiments, the notificationmessage may be a request for permission to access the user's profilecharacteristics. For example, the media guidance application maygenerate another notification message in place of advertisement 120:“Amy, log in to your Facebook® account and receive customized discountsat our stores!” In the above example, if the user chooses to log in heraccount, the media guidance application will have received implicitpermission to access additional layers of her profile characteristics.In some further embodiments, the media guidance application may requestexplicit, rather than implicit permissions to access additional profilecharacteristics from the user. For example, the media guidanceapplication may generate a notification message in place ofadvertisement 130: “Amy, would you grant us permission to access yourshopping history in exchange for customized discounts specificallytailored to your shopping needs? Click YES here.” In this example, whenthe media guidance application receives the user's input to grant accessto her shopping history, the media guidance application may submit theuser input to a shopping site where the user's shopping history isstored, and have the user's grant of access validated in order to accessher shopping history via the backend.

In some other embodiments, the advertisements 110, 120, and 130 asdepicted on user interface 100 may each correspond to an optimalpromotion offer generated for an ideal user as envisioned by therespective third party advertiser or merchant associated with eachadvertisement. The user or the “ideal user” may have a multi-layeredprofile including a plurality of profile characteristics, as illustratedwith respect to FIG. 2 and FIG. 3 below.

In response to the media guidance application receiving user selectionof one of advertisements 110, 120, and 130, the media guidanceapplication may share the user's profile information with acorresponding third party advertiser or merchant. In some embodiments,in the event that the media guidance application does not generate theoptional FIG. 1 for display, such as due to a lack of sufficient profileinformation about the user, the media guidance application may proceedstraight to FIG. 2 and generate for display an interface 200, allowingthe user to actively enter her profile characteristics to share with thethird party in exchange for the possibility of receiving discounts onher subsequent purchases, as will be discussed below in relation to FIG.2. In some embodiments, interface 200 may be a web page, a televisiondisplay screen, an application portal, or any other applicationinterface. For example, if the media guidance application knows verylittle profile information about Amy to begin with, the media guidanceapplication may not generate user interface 100 for display, and mayinstead ask Amy to enter her profile information to share with the thirdparty in exchange for the “opportunity to receive discounts for herpurchases at the third party's web site.”

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may prompt the userwith a pop-up reminder that such sharing will take place, and ask theuser whether to proceed. In some embodiments, as illustrated in FIG. 2,the media guidance application may ask the user to select portions ofher profile to be shared with a particular advertiser or merchant. Forexample, in response to receiving a selection of advertisement 110 fromthe user, the media guidance application may generate for display aprompt to the user: “Select parts of your profile that you are willingto share with AMC in the next page. Your actual discount will berevealed immediately after your selections!” In this manner, the mediaguidance application incentivizes the user to share her profileinformation with the third party while obtaining the user's explicitpermission to do so, and at the same time providing the third party atargeted audience who is likely more interested in the product offeringsof the third party than the general public.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may provide the userwith an option to dismiss the optimal promotion offers fromadvertisements 110, 120, and 130. Selectable option 140 illustrates anexample of such a dismissal option to remove advertisements 110, 120,and 130 from the user's interface 100. In response to receiving theuser's selection of selectable option 140, the media guidanceapplication may refresh user interface 100 with other offers andadvertisements, and no longer display advertisements 110, 120, and 130.In some embodiments, the media guidance application may generate fordisplay dismissal options such as option 140 for each advertisement. Forexample, rather than having a single selectable option 140 thatdismisses every advertisement currently displayed, the user may selectindividual advertisements to remove advertisement 110, 120, or 130 fromuser interface 100.

In some embodiments, removal of a particular advertisement from display,such as advertisement 110, may reduce the probability of similaradvertisements from re-appearing on the user's account. The mediaguidance application may limit the frequency of occurrences ofadvertisements similar to advertisement 110, or advertisements from thesame third party as advertisement 110, for the user using a numericfrequency reduction mechanism, in response to receiving the user'sselection to dismiss that particular advertisement. In this way, themedia guidance application provides the user with a real-timeopportunity to refine advertisements that she is interested in, whilefine-tuning the audience to whom advertisements from a particular thirdparty are presented. Overall, the media guidance application reducesineffective marketing efforts for both sides.

In some embodiments, if the user selects a particular advertisement,such as advertisement 120, the media guidance application may direct theuser to FIG. 2, where the user is able to select which profilecharacteristics from her profile to share with the particular thirdparty associated with the selected advertisement. In some embodiments,if the media guidance application that generated user interface 100 fordisplay is the third party merchant or advertiser, it may prompt theuser that she will be re-directed to an interface of the media guidanceapplication where she can set up and edit her profile to indicate whichportion of her profile information to share with the third party. Forexample, upon receiving Amy's selection of advertisement 120, theinterface of City Athletics may display a pop-up window for Amy thatsays: “You will be re-directed to www.CentralExchange.xyz to selectwhich part of your profile you are willing to share with us, in exchangefor this promotion offer.” In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may give the user an option to cancel this selection andremain at the current interface without setting up or editing herprofile. In some other embodiments, the media guidance application mayallow the user to set up a profile and share her information with thethird party locally, without having to be re-directed to the mediaguidance application. These and other considerations provide the userwith the most control over how her profile information is being used,and with whom the information is shared. In some embodiments, if themedia guidance application that generated user interface 100 is themedia guidance application, it may prompt the user that she will betaken to another page where she can set up or edit her profile toindicate which portion of her profile information to share with theparticular third party that corresponds to the selected advertisement,i.e., advertisement 120.

FIG. 2 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a user interface thatallows a user to choose profile characteristics to share with a thirdparty, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. In someembodiments, such as when the optional interface 100 of FIG. 1 is notgenerated for display, the media guidance application may generate fordisplay user interface 200 of FIG. 2 for the user to choose profilecharacteristics to share with the third party in exchange for an actualpromotion offer. In FIG. 2, like before, user interface 200 can begenerated by the media guidance application running at either thecentral exchange or at the third party itself. If the media guidanceapplication at the central exchange generates user interface 200 fordisplay, the identity of the third party associated with the promotionoffer may be identified on user interface 200. For example, Label 204may identify “City Athletics” as the interested third party if userinterface 200 is generated by the media guidance application at thecentral exchange.

In some embodiments, the third party with which the user agrees to shareprofile characteristics with is not limited to a commercial entity, butcould be a person instead. The media guidance application may record,using an interface similar to user interface 200, the user's preferencefor profile data sharing for family, friends, and colleagues. Forexample, Amy (the user) may not mind sharing home addresses and TVwatching habits with family, but may prefer to keep these profile datahidden from a particular friend. Amy in this example may also share hersocial network activities with friends but not colleagues. In thisexample, the media guidance application may capture Amy'sprofile-sharing preferences with a member of her family, a friend, acolleague, or the general public based on the discussions of interface200 below without deviating from the spirit of the present invention. Insome embodiments, the user's sharing of profile data with a person mayearn her social credits or social points, which the user may use as aform of electronic currency specifically tied to the user, similar to adiscount that is customized for the user. In some other embodiments, theuser's sharing of profile with a person may only act as a customizedfirewall to her data, without the possibility of exchanging it for apromotion offer or an electronic currency.

Label 202, similar to label 102 of FIG. 1, identifies the user andindicates that the user has logged-onto her account with the mediaguidance application. The media guidance application allows the user tolog-off the current account by selecting the “LOG OUT” option 206, inthe event that the user has finished setting up or editing her profile,or is no longer interested in doing so.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application stratifies theuser's profile into a plurality of layers, such as a Basic Layer 210, aBehavioral Layer 220, and other layers such as Layer 230. The layers canbe viewed using a horizontal and/or vertical scrollbar to showadditional layers that are part of the user's profile. In someembodiments, the Basic Layer 210 may consist of basic demographicinformation such as Name, Address, Phone Number, Household ContactInformation, Spouse Name, Child/Children Names, Gender, Age, etc. TheBehavior Layer 220 may consist of video viewing habits, shopping habits,shopping history, sports preferences, etc. In some embodiments, thedivision of profile characteristics into layers may be adjustable suchthat a particular profile characteristic may fit into one or morelayers. In some embodiments, the level of granularity of the definitionsof profile characteristics and layers may be flexible. For example, aprofile characteristic may be treated as a layer and sub-divided intofurther profile characteristics.

Each layer of the user's profile defines a category of her profileinformation and includes one or more profile characteristics. Forexample, Basic Layer 210 may include basic demographic information suchas profile characteristics “Name,” “Address,” “Gender,” “Age,”“Education,” etc. In some embodiments, the media guidance applicationmay receive one or more selections of a subset of the profilecharacteristics from the user, which are those that the user is willingto share with the interested third party corresponding to Label 204. Forexample, in user interface 200, the user, Amy, has selected “Gender,”“Age,” and “Education” from a first layer (Basic Layer 210) and “SportsPreference” from a second layer (Behavioral Layer 220) as the subset toshare with City Athletics, in exchange for as much of the $5.00 discountas she can receive on the “Baseball” product she had selected in theprevious page (i.e., advertisement 120), while not revealing anyinformation to City Athletics about her video viewing history, address,or shopping history.

In this way, the user will retain total control of her profile data andbe able to use her data to exchange for promotion offers from businessesthat she is interested in. Meanwhile, advertisers or merchants are ableto more efficiently allocate resources to target audience users who aremore likely to be interested in their products or services.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application further generateslabel 240 for display on user interface 200. Label 240 indicates, inreal time, the actual discount that the user can expect to receive basedon her current selections of the subset of profile characteristics. Forexample, after Amy has selected “Gender,” “Age,” and “Sports Preference”on user interface 200, label 240 may reflect her total savings as “10%OFF.” In order to receive a higher discount, Amy may decide toadditionally share her “Education” profile characteristic from BasicLayer 210. In response to receiving her selection of the “Education”profile characteristic, the media guidance application may update label240 to “15% OFF,” which reflects the additional discount that CityAthletics is willing to give to Amy as a result of her sharing theadditional “Education” profile characteristic.

At the conclusion of the user's selection of profile characteristics toshare with the third party, the media guidance application may generatefor display a message that confirms the user's intention to share thesubset of profile characteristics with the third party. For example,once Amy has selected the gender, age, education, and sports preferenceprofile characteristics to share with City Athletics in exchange for the15% OFF discount, the media guidance application may generate a messagefor Amy that indicates: “Are you sure you want to share the followinginformation about you with City Athletics in exchange for your 15% OFFdiscount?” followed by a table containing Amy's selected subset ofprofile characteristics, such as Table 1:

TABLE 1 Amy's subset of selected profile characteristics to be sharedwith City Athletics Your Selected Profile Characteristics Your dataGender F Age 23 Education College Sports Preference Baseball, FootballUpon receiving an affirmative response from the user, the media guidanceapplication may proceed to present the selected profile characteristicsto the third party. In the above example, the media guidance applicationmay receive an input of “YES” from Amy in response to the message, whichindicates her confirmation and consent to the use of her selectedprofile characteristics by City Athletics, and the media guidanceapplication may proceed to present Amy's selected information to CityAthletics. In some embodiments, the media guidance application mayprovide the user with an opportunity to edit, revise, or delete herselections at this point. For example, Amy may decide that she wouldrather not share her “Age” information after reviewing the data in Table1, and will be directed to user interface 200 to revise her selections.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may allow the userto set up a user account prior to receiving any selection of anadvertisement, such as advertisements 110, 120, or 130 of FIG. 1. Themedia guidance application may pre-populate the user account associatedwith the user by polling her profile characteristics from a plurality ofsources, such as media guidance data source 518 or user profile database1013 in FIG. 9, as well as social media or any other databases thattrack and store user profile data. Additionally, the media guidanceapplication may receive active input from the user herself as sheanswers questions while setting up her account. For example, after themedia guidance application receives input from Amy that sets up heraccount at www.CentralExchange.xyz, including her name, address, andage, the media guidance application may poll additional informationabout Amy from the plurality of sources and pre-populate her shoppinghistory, education level, and gender in her profile.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may infer or deduceadditional layers of profile characteristics of the user's based on theprofile characteristics that the user has entered, or selected. In someother embodiments, the media guidance application may seek permissionfrom the user to grant access to additional data sources as the userprovides access to an existing layer of profile characteristics. Forexample, based on the user's selection of “Gender” as female and herconsent to granting the media guidance application access to the“Gender” profile information, the media guidance application may inferor deduce that the user has additional shopping data from major cosmeticmerchant portals. The media guidance application in the above examplemay request permission from the user to grant it access to her shoppinghistory at Sephora® in exchange for additional potential discounts. Inanother example, the media guidance application may deduce from theuser-entered profile characteristic indicating that the user loves Colathat additional shopping history from the user's offline shoppingactivities would be useful. In this example, the media guidanceapplication may prompt the user to provide access to her Safeway®royalty card information in order to gain access to her shopping historyat the local supermarket. In some embodiments, the inferred, deduced, oradditionally acquired layers of profile characteristics may also beincluded in the user's account with www.CentralExchange.xyz.

Once the user account has been set up, the media guidance applicationmay generate for display, to the user, a message that confirms theinformation received or inferred. For example, the media guidanceapplication may display a pop-up window to Amy, at the conclusion of heraccount setup, that says “We have you as a female college graduate inyour 20s who loves shopping sports goods and cosmetic products. Is thataccurate? These information will be shared with City Athletics.” In theabove example, the media guidance application requests explicit consentfrom the user to grant the third party access to data acquired about theuser, either deterministically or probabilistically. In another example,the media guidance application may display a pop-up window to Amy at theconclusion of her account setup, and inquire: “We received dataindicating that you are a female college graduate in your 20s who lovesshopping sporting goods. We also think you might like cosmetic products.Is that accurate? If not, could you correct us?” Alternatively, themedia guidance application may generate for display a web page or othertype of interface that lists each and every profile characteristicsreceived or inferred about Amy, and require her to “Please verify thefollowing account information we have about you” followed by a displayof Amy's profile characteristics that the media guidance application hason file. In this embodiment, the media guidance application provides theuser an opportunity to modify and override any inferred profilecharacteristics of the user's. In some embodiments, the media guidanceapplication may not have sufficient information on the user, and mayrely on the subset of profile characteristics selected by the user onuser interface 200 to compare against the target audience profileestablished by the third party. By comparing the subset of user profilecharacteristics against the target characteristics in the targetaudience profile, the media guidance application may calculate aninstantaneous (real-time) promotion offer for the user, as will bediscussed below in relation to FIG. 3 and FIG. 4.

In some embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure, the mediaguidance application may allow the third party to avoid delaysassociated with matching a particular user with offline data sets. Themedia guidance application may achieve this by letting the particularuser set up her account ahead of time, as described in the foregoingparagraphs. As soon as the third party is notified of the user'sinterest in their product or service, the user's identity, detailedprofile information as reflected in the profile characteristics she hadselected, and total actual discount that should be applied to the userhave all been analyzed and presented to the third party. To achieve thisends, in some embodiments, the media guidance application maintains atarget audience profile for each third party merchant or advertiser, aswell as the rules that they wish to apply in giving out promotion offerbased on the degree of matching between a particular user's profile andthe target audience profile. This will be illustrated in FIG. 3.

FIG. 3 depicts an illustrative embodiment of an interface that allows athird party to define a target audience profile, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. Interface 300 in FIG. 3 is shown as a webpage being hosted by the media guidance application running at thecentral exchange, as indicated by label 304. However, it is understoodthat the third party merchant or advertiser can also generate via theirrespective media guidance application a version of interface 300, or asimilar non-webpage interface, such as those described above in relationto interface 100 and interface 200, for display without deviating fromthe teachings herein. In some embodiments, “LOG OUT” option 306 operatesin a similar manner as “LOG OUT” option 206 in FIG. 2. In response tothe media guidance application receiving a selection of “LOG OUT” option306 from the third party, the media guidance application mayautomatically save all changes to the target audience profile and exitthe account of the third party.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may allow the thirdparty to enter a plurality of target audience characteristics (or“target characteristics”) using interface 300 in FIG. 3. The targetaudience characteristics collectively define a target audience profilefor an “ideal user” that the third party wishes to presentadvertisements, messages, promotion offers, or coupons to. In someembodiments, the third party may define one or more target audienceprofiles for each advertisement that it wishes to place.

In some embodiments, the target audience of a third party business maybe a group of users that are most likely going to be interested in theproducts and services offered at the third party business. In some otherembodiments, the target audience may refer to users who are mostresponsive to marketing campaigns by the third party, based onhistorical performance. In some further embodiments, the target audiencemay refer to users who are willing to share their profile information inexchange for promotion offers from the third party business. In someembodiments, the target characteristics as defined in the targetaudience profile may be stratified into layers in a similar way that auser's profile characteristics are grouped into layers, as discussedabove in relation to FIG. 2.

In interface 300, the media guidance application has received selectionsof Age 310, Education 330, and Sports Preference 340 from the thirdparty as part of their target audience profile, but did not receiveselection of Gender 320 from the third party. For instance, for each ofthe selected target characteristics Age 310, Education 330, and SportsPreference 340, the media guidance application may receive additionalselections from the third party business, City Athletics, that specifythe associated values as well as promotion offers of the respectivetarget characteristic. For instance, for target characteristic Age 310,the media guidance application may receive input from City Athletics tochoose the 20-30 age group from dropdown menu 312 and define a 2%discount from dropdown menu 314 for any user that belongs to this agegroup and is also willing to share her data with City Athletics.Similarly, for Sports Preference 340, the media guidance application mayreceive input from City Athletics to select from dropdown menus 342 and344, which define the target audience profile to include users who lovebaseball, and to extend a half percent discount towards users who fit inthat category and are willing to share their profile data.

In the example illustrated in interface 300, the target characteristicGender 320 is not selected by City Athletics, therefore itscorresponding value and discount dropdown menus 322 and 324 are notselected. In some embodiments, an unselected target characteristic mayhave its corresponding value and discount dropdown menus greyed out, soas to prevent accidental unwanted selections.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application may allow foradditional target characteristics to be added by receiving a selectionof button 350 to add another row to the interface. In some embodiments,the additional row will contain different target characteristics fromthose already displayed in the interface. In some other embodiments, theadditional row may include the same target characteristics as theexisting ones and be taken into consideration following some commonlogical operators. For example, City Athletics may add another row of“Sports Preference” target characteristic in addition to SportsPreference 340, and may define the corresponding value of the additionalnow of “sports preference” to be “Football” followed by an “AND” logicaloperator. In this way, the ideal user profile would contain the targetcharacteristic of a sports preference of both baseball and football.Consequently, a user can enjoy the corresponding promotion offer (e.g.,half percent OFF) if her sports preference matches with both targetcharacteristics.

In some embodiments, the target characteristics as entered in interface300 collectively define the hypothetical profile of an ideal user. Themedia guidance application may tally up the individual discount valueassociated with each selected target characteristic, and compute anoptimal promotion offer attainable by an individual user. For example,for City Athletics’ ideal target audience as shown below in Table 1, thetotal discount attainable by one such ideal user is 3%. Accordingly, theoptimal promotion offer may be 3%. In this example, the initialadvertisement that Amy had selected, such as advertisements 110, 120,and 130 of FIG. 1, may have shown 3% as the optimal promotion offer.

In some embodiments, the optimal promotion offer is not defined as thehighest discount attainable by an ideal user, as discussed above.Instead, the optimal promotion offer in the alternative embodiments maybe defined as the highest amount of discount attainable by the user whoviewed the initial advertisement. For example, for Amy, who has theprofile characteristics shown in Table 1 and lives in a rural area, themedia guidance application may determine that she matches three out ofthe four target characteristics as defined in Table 2 by City Athletics.The fact that Amy lives in a rural area means she does not match the“Address” target

TABLE 2 City Athletics' target audience profile Target CharacteristicTarget Value Promotion offer Age 20-30   2% Address Urban 0.2% EducationCollege and above 0.3% Sports Preference Baseball 0.5%characteristic, regardless of whether or not she is willing to sharethat information with City Athletics. Accordingly, the optimal promotionoffer as indicated on advertisements 110, 120, and 130 may be 2.8%,rather than 3%, under the alternative embodiments.

Although user interface 200 of FIG. 2 and interface 300 of FIG. 3illustrate various profile or target characteristics using checkboxesand dropdown menus, this is understood to be illustrative in nature andnon-limiting. Various other user interface elements, including dialbuttons, text boxes, and selection menus can be used in place of any ofthe above-described elements without deviating from the teachings of thepresent disclosure. For example, instead of selecting a promotion offerassociated with a particular target characteristic, the third party maymanually enter a discount value in a text box to be associated with theparticular target characteristic. Furthermore, in some embodiments, thethird party may choose to define the amount of promotion offerassociated with a particular target characteristic as a dynamic functionby using a script language processor implemented on interface 300. Insome further embodiments, the third party may define the promotion offerusing an equation. For instance, instead of defining a 2% discount for amatching user who shares her age information, City Athletics may specifythat a user who fits both the “Age” and “Education” characteristics willenjoy a discount of 2% off, whereas for a user who only fits the “Age”characteristic, the discount will only be $2.00 off (subject to a 1%discount cap).

As illustrated in relation to FIG. 2, the media guidance application mayreceive selections from the user to share the subset of profilecharacteristics with the third party, in response to determining a matchbetween the user's profile characteristics and the third party's targetcharacteristics. Based on the subset of profile characteristics, themedia guidance application may calculate an actual promotion offer forthe user. In some embodiments, the actual promotion offer calculatedfrom the subset may not exceed the optimal promotion offer for the user.For example, in the hypothetical situation as outlined in Table 3, Amy'sprofile includes profile characteristics such as age, address, educationlevel, gender, and sports preference. Out of these profilecharacteristics, Amy has chosen to share her age, education, and gendercharacteristics with City Athletics (C.A. for short), as indicated bythe third column of Table 3. The target audience profile as specified byCity Athletics is listed in the last column along with the promotionoffer associated with each target characteristic.

Consistent with prior definitions and at least one embodiment, theoptimal promotion offer for Amy is 2.8%, as calculated based on thedegree of matching between Amy's profile characteristics and CityAthletics' target characteristics. This is the optimal promotion offerthat the media guidance application will generate for display for Amywhen she visits user interface 100 of FIG. 1. For example, advertisement120 may display a message that indicates “Would you consider buying[product] for up to 2.8% discount?”

TABLE 3 Characteristics Amy's Profile Amy's Subset C.A.'s Target Age 23x 20-30 (2%) Address Rural Urban (0.2%) Education College x College orabove (0.3%) Gender F x Sports Baseball, Baseball Preference Football(0.5%)After Amy has selected advertisement 120, she may select the subset ofher profile characteristics—Age, Education, and Gender—to share withCity Athletics, in accordance with the hypothetical scenario in Table 3.This subset, however, only matches with two of City Athletics' targetcharacteristics, i.e., Age and Education. Even though Amy has includedGender as a profile characteristic to share with City Athletics, CityAthletics is not interested in that information and does not assign anydiscount value to be associated with gender, as shown by the uncheckedbox representing Gender 320 of FIG. 3. Accordingly, the actual promotionoffer that Amy may receive from City Athletics is 2.3% (calculated basedon “Age” and “Education” only), which is not greater than the optimalpromotion offer of 2.8%.

The embodiments above are generally directed to the third party definingan optimal promotion offer as the starting point. However, it iscontemplated that a minimum base discount model can be used in place ofthe optimal promotion offer model without deviating from the spirit ofthe present disclosure. In embodiments where a minimum base discount isused as the starting point, the third party will define a startingpromotion offer for any user interested in sharing her profileinformation. By matching a particular user's profile characteristicswith the target audience profile, the media guidance application mayincrease the base promotion offer by a percentage as calculated based onthe degree of matching. For example, City Athletics is willing to offera 2% promotion offer to any user who is willing to share her profile. Ifthe media guidance application compute a percentage value based on thedegree of matching between Amy's shared subset of profilecharacteristics with the third-party-defined target characteristics,e.g., 46.7%, the media guidance application may derive the actualpromotion offer that City Athletics is willing to give Amy as 4.3% off(2% divided by 46.7%).

Regardless of the starting point, the actual promotion offer may, insome embodiments, be displayed in one or more advertisements on an userinterface, such as that of FIG. 4. In some embodiments, after the thirdparty has set up a target audience profile (such as that of FIG. 3) andthe user has selected a subset of profile characteristics to share withthe third party (such as that of FIG. 2), the user may be prompted: “Nowyou will be re-directed to the Third Party's web site to apply youractual discount!” and be re-directed to user interface 400 as shown inFIG. 4.

FIG. 4 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a user interface thatinforms a user about an actual promotion offer from a third party, inaccordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. User interface 400as shown in FIG. 4 may be substantially similar to user interface 100shown in FIG. 1, and replaces the optimal promotion offers (e.g., “Yourdiscount: up to $5.00 off”) with actual promotion offers associated withthe user (e.g., “You pay $47.00”). For example, advertisements 420 and430 may correspond to updated versions of advertisements 120 and 130,respectively. As previously discussed in relation to advertisement 110,in some embodiments, advertisement 410 may reflect products or servicesunrelated to the third party business and therefore may remain unchangedafter the user has submitted her subset of profile characteristics toshare with the third party. For example, user interface 400 is generatedas a web page of City Athletics (or a television display), andadvertisements 420 and 430 are substantially related to the products orservices offered by City Athletics. Advertisement 410, however, may beunrelated to City Athletics and therefore is not updated fromadvertisement 110 when Amy has only chosen to share some of her profilecharacteristics with City Athletics, on user interface 200 of FIG. 2.Lastly, labels 402 and 404 largely correspond to labels 102 and 104 ofFIG. 1, which indicate the user's identity and the third party'sidentity, respectively.

In some embodiments, in response to receiving a selection of an updatedadvertisement from the user, the media guidance application may allowthe user to purchase the product or service at the actual discount, asindicated on the updated advertisement, which is specific to the user.In some embodiments, the communication of the actual promotion offer maybe carried out in javascript, HTML, or any suitable interface language.Each and every embodiment of the present disclosure can be implementedon the content delivery systems as discussed in relation to FIG. 9 andFIG. 10 below.

The amount of content available to users in any given content deliverysystem can be substantial. Consequently, many users desire a form ofmedia guidance through an interface that allows users to efficientlynavigate content selections and easily identify content that they maydesire. An application that provides such guidance is referred to hereinas an interactive media guidance application or, sometimes, a mediaguidance application or a guidance application.

Interactive media guidance applications may take various forms dependingon the content for which they provide guidance. One typical type ofmedia guidance application is an interactive television program guide.Interactive television program guides (sometimes referred to aselectronic program guides) are well-known guidance applications that,among other things, allow users to navigate among and locate many typesof content or media assets. Interactive media guidance applications maygenerate graphical user interface screens that enable a user to navigateamong, locate and select content. As referred to herein, the terms“media asset” and “content” should be understood to mean anelectronically consumable user asset, such as television programming, aswell as pay-per-view programs, on-demand programs (as in video-on-demand(VOD) systems), Internet content (e.g., streaming content, downloadablecontent, Webcasts, etc.), video clips, audio, content information,pictures, rotating images, documents, playlists, websites, articles,books, electronic books, blogs, advertisements, chat sessions, socialmedia, applications, games, and/or any other media or multimedia and/orcombination of the same. Guidance applications also allow users tonavigate among and locate content. As referred to herein, the term“multimedia” should be understood to mean content that utilizes at leasttwo different content forms described above, for example, text, audio,images, video, or interactivity content forms. Content may be recorded,played, displayed or accessed by user equipment devices, but can also bepart of a live performance.

The media guidance application and/or any instructions for performingany of the embodiments discussed herein may be encoded on computerreadable media. Computer readable media includes any media capable ofstoring data. The computer readable media may be transitory, including,but not limited to, propagating electrical or electromagnetic signals,or may be non-transitory including, but not limited to, volatile andnon-volatile computer memory or storage devices such as a hard disk,floppy disk, USB drive, DVD, CD, media cards, register memory, processorcaches, Random Access Memory (“RAM”), etc.

With the advent of the Internet, mobile computing, and high-speedwireless networks, users are accessing media on user equipment deviceson which they traditionally did not. As referred to herein, the phrase“user equipment device,” “user equipment,” “user device,” “equipmentdevice,” “electronic device,” “electronic equipment,” “media equipmentdevice,” or “media device” should be understood to mean any device foraccessing the content described above, such as a television, a Smart TV,a set-top box, an integrated receiver decoder (IRD) for handlingsatellite television, a digital storage device, a digital media receiver(DMR), a digital media adapter (DMA), a streaming media device, a DVDplayer, a DVD recorder, a connected DVD, a local media server, a BLU-RAYplayer, a BLU-RAY recorder, a personal computer (PC), a laptop computer,a tablet computer, a WebTV box, a personal computer television (PC/TV),a PC media server, a PC media center, a hand-held computer, a stationarytelephone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobile telephone, aportable video player, a portable music player, a portable gamingmachine, a smart phone, or any other television equipment, computingequipment, or wireless device, and/or combination of the same. In someembodiments, a third party business may interact with a remote servervia a similar equipment device, which may be termed “third partyequipment device,” or “equipment device” in general. For simplicity, an“equipment device” may be used by either an individual user or a thirdparty business, such as a third party merchant or advertiser, so long asthe manner of interaction conforms to the capabilities of the genericequipment device as discussed below in relation to FIG. 9. In someembodiments, the equipment device may have a front facing screen and arear facing screen, multiple front screens, or multiple angled screens.In some embodiments, the equipment device may have a front facing cameraand/or a rear facing camera. On these equipment devices, users may beable to navigate among and locate the same content available through atelevision. Consequently, media guidance may be available on thesedevices, as well. The guidance provided may be for content availableonly through a television, for content available only through one ormore of other types of equipment devices, or for content available boththrough a television and one or more of the other types of equipmentdevices. The media guidance applications may be provided as on-lineapplications (i.e., provided on a web-site), or as stand-aloneapplications or clients on equipment devices. Various devices andplatforms that may implement media guidance applications are describedin more detail below.

One of the functions of the media guidance application is to providemedia guidance data to users. As referred to herein, the phrase “mediaguidance data” or “guidance data” should be understood to mean any datarelated to content or data used in operating the guidance application.For example, the guidance data may include program information, guidanceapplication settings, user preferences, user profile information, medialistings, media-related information (e.g., broadcast times, broadcastchannels, titles, descriptions, ratings information (e.g., parentalcontrol ratings, critic's ratings, etc.), genre or category information,actor information, logo data for broadcasters' or providers' logos,etc.), media format (e.g., standard definition, high definition, 3D,etc.), advertisement information (e.g., text, images, media clips,etc.), on-demand information, blogs, websites, and any other type ofguidance data that is helpful for a user to navigate among and locatedesired content selections.

As previously discussed, FIGS. 1-4 show illustrative interfacesdisplayed on display screens that may be used to provide media guidancedata. The display screens shown in FIGS. 1-4 may be implemented on anysuitable user or third party business equipment device or platform.While the displays of FIGS. 1-4 are illustrated as full screen displays,they may also be fully or partially overlaid over content beingdisplayed. A user may indicate a desire to access content information byselecting a selectable option provided in a display screen (e.g., a menuoption, a listings option, an icon, a hyperlink, etc.) or pressing adedicated button (e.g., a GUIDE button) on a remote control or otheruser input interface or device. In response to the user's indication,the media guidance application may provide a display screen with mediaguidance data organized in one of several ways, such as by time andchannel in a grid, by time, by channel, by source, by content type, bycategory (e.g., movies, sports, news, children, or other categories ofprogramming), or other predefined, user-defined, or other organizationcriteria.

In particular, advertisements 110, 120, 130, 410, 420, and 430 may beselectable and provide further information about content, provideinformation about a product or a service, enable purchasing of content,a product, or a service, provide content relating to the advertisement,etc. As discussed herein, Advertisements 110, 120, 130, 410, 420, and430 may be targeted based on a user's profile/preferences, monitoreduser activity, the type of display provided, or on other suitabletargeted advertisement bases.

FIGS. 5-8 show illustrative display screens that may be used to providemedia guidance data. The display screens shown in FIGS. 5-8 may beimplemented on any suitable user equipment device or platform. While thedisplays of FIGS. 5-8 are illustrated as full screen displays, they mayalso be fully or partially overlaid over content being displayed. A usermay indicate a desire to access content information by selecting aselectable option provided in a display screen (e.g., a menu option, alistings option, an icon, a hyperlink, etc.) or pressing a dedicatedbutton (e.g., a GUIDE button) on a remote control or other user inputinterface or device. In response to the user's indication, the mediaguidance application may provide a display screen with media guidancedata organized in one of several ways, such as by time and channel in agrid, by time, by channel, by source, by content type, by category(e.g., movies, sports, news, children, or other categories ofprogramming), or other predefined, user-defined, or other organizationcriteria.

FIG. 5 shows illustrative grid of a program listings display 500arranged by time and channel that also enables access to different typesof content in a single display. Display 500 may include grid 502 with:(1) a column of channel/content type identifiers 504, where eachchannel/content type identifier (which is a cell in the column)identifies a different channel or content type available; and (2) a rowof time identifiers 506, where each time identifier (which is a cell inthe row) identifies a time block of programming. Grid 502 also includescells of program listings, such as program listing 508, where eachlisting provides the title of the program provided on the listing'sassociated channel and time. With a user input device, a user can selectprogram listings by moving highlight region 510. Information relating tothe program listing selected by highlight region 510 may be provided inprogram information region 512. Region 512 may include, for example, theprogram title, the program description, the time the program is provided(if applicable), the channel the program is on (if applicable), theprogram's rating, and other desired information.

In addition to providing access to linear programming (e.g., contentthat is scheduled to be transmitted to a plurality of user equipmentdevices at a predetermined time and is provided according to aschedule), the media guidance application also provides access tonon-linear programming (e.g., content accessible to a user equipmentdevice at any time and is not provided according to a schedule).Non-linear programming may include content from different contentsources including on-demand content (e.g., VOD), Internet content (e.g.,streaming media, downloadable media, etc.), locally stored content(e.g., content stored on any user equipment device described above orother storage device), or other time-independent content. On-demandcontent may include movies or any other content provided by a particularcontent provider (e.g., HBO On Demand providing “The Sopranos” and “CurbYour Enthusiasm”). HBO ON DEMAND is a service mark owned by Time WarnerCompany L.P. et al. and THE SOPRANOS and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM aretrademarks owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. Internet content mayinclude web events, such as a chat session or Webcast, or contentavailable on-demand as streaming content or downloadable content throughan Internet web site or other Internet access (e.g. FTP).

Grid 502 may provide media guidance data for non-linear programmingincluding on-demand listing 514, recorded content listing 516, andInternet content listing 518. A display combining media guidance datafor content from different types of content sources is sometimesreferred to as a “mixed-media” display. Various permutations of thetypes of media guidance data that may be displayed that are differentthan display 500 may be based on user selection or guidance applicationdefinition (e.g., a display of only recorded and broadcast listings,only on-demand and broadcast listings, etc.). As illustrated, listings514, 516, and 518 are shown as spanning the entire time block displayedin grid 502 to indicate that selection of these listings may provideaccess to a display dedicated to on-demand listings, recorded listings,or Internet listings, respectively. In some embodiments, listings forthese content types may be included directly in grid 502. Additionalmedia guidance data may be displayed in response to the user selectingone of the navigational icons 520. (Pressing an arrow key on a userinput device may affect the display in a similar manner as selectingnavigational icons 520.)

Display 500 may also include video region 522, and options region 526.Video region 522 may allow the user to view and/or preview programs thatare currently available, will be available, or were available to theuser. The content of video region 522 may correspond to, or beindependent from, one of the listings displayed in grid 502. Griddisplays including a video region are sometimes referred to aspicture-in-guide (PIG) displays. PIG displays and their functionalitiesare described in greater detail in Satterfield et al. U.S. Pat. No.6,564,378, issued May 13, 2003 and Yuen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,239,794,issued May 29, 2001, which are hereby incorporated by reference hereinin their entireties. PIG displays may be included in other mediaguidance application display screens of the embodiments describedherein.

Advertisement 524 may provide an advertisement for content that,depending on a viewer's access rights (e.g., for subscriptionprogramming), is currently available for viewing, will be available forviewing in the future, or may never become available for viewing, andmay correspond to or be unrelated to one or more of the content listingsin grid 102. Advertisement 524 may also be for products or servicesrelated or unrelated to the content displayed in grid 102. Advertisement524 may be selectable and provide further information about content,provide information about a product or a service, enable purchasing ofcontent, a product, or a service, provide content relating to theadvertisement, etc. Advertisement 524 may be targeted based on a user'sprofile/preferences, monitored user activity, the type of displayprovided, or on other suitable targeted advertisement bases.

While Advertisements 110, 120, 130, 410, 420, and 430 are shown asrectangular or banner shaped, the advertisements may be provided in anysuitable size, shape, and location in a guidance application display.For example, the advertisements may be overlaid over content or aguidance application display or embedded within a display.Advertisements may also include text, images, rotating images, videoclips, or other types of content described above. Advertisements may bestored in a user equipment device having a guidance application, in adatabase connected to the user equipment, in a remote location(including streaming media servers), or on other storage means, or acombination of these locations. Providing advertisements in a mediaguidance application is discussed in greater detail in, for example,Knudson et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0110499,filed Jan. 17, 2003; Ward, III et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,756,997, issuedJun. 29, 2004; and Schein et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,388,714, issued May 14,2002, which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in theirentireties. It will be appreciated that advertisements may be includedin other media guidance application display screens of the embodimentsdescribed herein.

Options region 526 may allow the user to access different types ofcontent, media guidance application displays, and/or media guidanceapplication features. Options region 526 may be part of display 500 (andother display screens described herein), or may be invoked by a user byselecting an on-screen option or pressing a dedicated or assignablebutton on a user input device. The selectable options within optionsregion 526 may concern features related to program listings in grid 502or may include options available from a main menu display. Featuresrelated to program listings may include searching for other air times orways of receiving a program, recording a program, enabling seriesrecording of a program, setting program and/or channel as a favorite,purchasing a program, or other features. Options available from a mainmenu display may include search options, VOD options, parental controloptions, Internet options, cloud-based options, device synchronizationoptions, second screen device options, options to access various typesof media guidance data displays, options to subscribe to a premiumservice, options to edit a user's profile, options to access a browseoverlay, or other options.

The media guidance application may be personalized based on a user'spreferences. A personalized media guidance application allows a user tocustomize displays and features to create a personalized “experience”with the media guidance application. This personalized experience may becreated by allowing a user to input these customizations and/or by themedia guidance application monitoring user activity to determine varioususer preferences. Users may access their personalized guidanceapplication by logging in or otherwise identifying themselves to theguidance application. Customization of the media guidance applicationmay be made in accordance with a user profile. The customizations mayinclude varying presentation schemes (e.g., color scheme of displays,font size of text, etc.), aspects of content listings displayed (e.g.,only HDTV or only 3D programming, user-specified broadcast channelsbased on favorite channel selections, re-ordering the display ofchannels, recommended content, etc.), desired recording features (e.g.,recording or series recordings for particular users, recording quality,etc.), parental control settings, customized presentation of Internetcontent (e.g., presentation of social media content, e-mail,electronically delivered articles, etc.) and other desiredcustomizations.

The media guidance application may allow a user to provide user profileinformation or may automatically compile user profile information. Themedia guidance application may, for example, monitor the content theuser accesses and/or other interactions the user may have with theguidance application. Additionally, the media guidance application mayobtain all or part of other user profiles that are related to aparticular user (e.g., from other web sites on the Internet the useraccesses, such as www.alltivo.com, from other media guidanceapplications the user accesses, from other interactive applications theuser accesses, from another user equipment device of the user, etc.),and/or obtain information about the user from other sources that themedia guidance application may access. As a result, a user can beprovided with a unified guidance application experience across theuser's different user equipment devices. This type of user experience isdescribed in greater detail below in connection with FIG. 10. Additionalpersonalized media guidance application features are described ingreater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No.2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005, Boyer et al., U.S. Pat. No.7,165,098, issued Jan. 16, 2007, and Ellis et al., U.S. PatentApplication Publication No. 2002/0174430, filed Feb. 21, 2002, which arehereby incorporated by reference herein in their entireties.

Another display arrangement for providing media guidance is shown inFIG. 6. Video mosaic display 600 includes selectable options 602 forcontent information organized based on content type, genre, and/or otherorganization criteria. In display 600, television listings option 604 isselected, thus providing listings 606, 608, 610, and 612 as broadcastprogram listings. In display 600 the listings may provide graphicalimages including cover art, still images from the content, video clippreviews, live video from the content, or other types of content thatindicate to a user the content being described by the media guidancedata in the listing. Each of the graphical listings may also beaccompanied by text to provide further information about the contentassociated with the listing. For example, listing 608 may include morethan one portion, including media portion 614 and text portion 616.Media portion 614 and/or text portion 616 may be selectable to viewcontent in full-screen or to view information related to the contentdisplayed in media portion 614 (e.g., to view listings for the channelthat the video is displayed on).

The listings in display 600 are of different sizes (i.e., listing 606 islarger than listings 608, 610, and 612), but if desired, all thelistings may be the same size. Listings may be of different sizes orgraphically accentuated to indicate degrees of interest to the user orto emphasize certain content, as desired by the content provider orbased on user preferences. Various systems and methods for graphicallyaccentuating content listings are discussed in, for example, Yates, U.S.Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0153885, filed Nov. 12, 2009,which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

FIG. 7 depicts an illustrative embodiment of a display screen thatpresents an advertisement and other interactive elements as part of amedia guidance application, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. The media guidance application may, instead of displayingadvertisements 110, 120, 130, or 524, generate advertisement 710 fordisplay in a portion of the screen. The media guidance application mayalso generate advertisement 710 for display during a commercial break ofa media asset, such as during a movie on-demand. In some embodiments inaccordance with FIG. 7, the media guidance application may generateinteractive elements on areas of the display that are not occupied byadvertisement 710, such as interactive regions 720 and 730. Theinteractive elements correspond to any icons, options, hyperlinks, orother interactive means that are responsive to user actions, and maybehave in a similar manner as selectable option 140, options regions526, or mosaic panels 608, 610, and 612, among other similar elements.The media guidance application may present notification messages orqueries in interactive regions 720 and 730, including the notificationmessages and queries that are previously discussed in relation to FIGS.1-4 and FIGS. 11-15 below.

For example, as the viewer is watching advertisement 710 (e.g., anadvertisement on ski products) during a commercial break, the mediaguidance application may present a notification message that includesquestion 722 “Would you consider buying [product]?” within interactivearea 720. As illustrated in relation to FIGS. 1-4, the media guidanceapplication may present two options based on the user's profileinformation that is publicly available to a particular merchant: option724 that reads “skiing equipment” and option 726 that reads “baseballs.”The media guidance application may further display a navigational cursorto allow the user to highlight option 724 to indicate his or herpreference for purchases at the moment.

Following this example, the media guidance application may, uponreceiving the user's selection of option 724, generate additionalqueries in interactive area 730 for the user to answer additionalquestions. As discussed above in relation to FIGS. 1-6, the mediaguidance application presents queries 732 and 734 in order to obtainadditional information that the merchant previously had no access to. Inthe exemplary display screen of FIG. 7, the media guidance applicationfurther presents queries to the user to inquire whether she is buyingthe skiing equipment for herself, and whether she would recommend theskiing equipment to a friend. Here, the media guidance applicationpresents interactive elements, such as a highlighted cursor, a textbox,a check box, or a voice transcription service, for the user to respondto, in order to obtain additional information about the user. At theconclusion of the user's interactions with the interactive areas, themedia guidance application may expand advertisement 710 to full-screen(thus occupying regions 720 and 730) and allow the user to continueviewing advertisement 710 presented during the commercial break.

FIG. 8 depicts another illustrative embodiment of a display screen thatpresents an advertisement and other interactive elements as part of amedia guidance application, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. In FIG. 8, rather than displaying the advertisement in alimited area of the screen, the media guidance application generatesadvertisement 810 (e.g., an advertisement on ski products) infull-screen and the interactive elements 820 and 830 as overlays on topof advertisement 810. For example, the media guidance application maygenerate interactive element 820 as a notification message much likethose described in relation to FIGS. 1-4. Upon receiving the user'sselection of interactive element 820, the media guidance application maydirect the user to a log-in page of a third-party social network site inorder to obtain information about the user that were not previouslyknown by the merchant, and to present discount offers accordingly. Inthe exemplary display screen of FIG. 8, the media guidance applicationdisplays interactive element 830 as a rotary dial for the user to selecta query question to respond to. In response to receiving the user'sselection and input of her information, the media guidance applicationmay hide interactive element 830 to allow the user to continue viewingadvertisement 810 during the commercial break.

FIGS. 7 and 8 could, in some embodiments, act as a point of entry forthe systems and methods described herein to operate from, in order toobtain additional information about the user and to calculate optimaloffers for the user. For instance, instead of visiting a web page, suchas those described in FIG. 1, as a starting point for the media guidanceapplication to begin querying information about the user, the user mayinteract with a regular television guide and be presented with questionsand queries such as interactive regions 720 and 730, and interactiveelements 820 and 830. At the conclusion of these interactions, or at theconclusion of the displayed advertisement, the media guidanceapplication may present an optimal discount offer to the user for theproduct that the user is most likely to buy based on the new informationobtained in the interim.

Users and third party businesses may access content and the mediaguidance application (and its display screens described above and below)from one or more of their equipment devices. FIG. 9 shows a generalizedembodiment of illustrative device 700—which may be used by the users orthe third party businesses, or both. More specific implementations ofequipment devices, such as user television equipment 1002, user computerequipment 1004, wireless user communications device 1006, merchant 1017,or advertisement provider 1019 are discussed below in connection withFIG. 10. Device 700 may receive content and data via input/output(hereinafter “I/O”) path 902. I/O path 902 may provide content (e.g.,broadcast programming, on-demand programming, Internet content, contentavailable over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN),and/or other content) and data to control circuitry 904, which includesprocessing circuitry 906 and storage 908. Control circuitry 904 may beused to send and receive commands, requests, and other suitable datausing I/O path 902. I/O path 902 may connect control circuitry 904 (andspecifically processing circuitry 906) to one or more communicationspaths (described below). I/O functions may be provided by one or more ofthese communications paths, but are shown as a single path in FIG. 9 toavoid overcomplicating the drawing.

Control circuitry 904 may be based on any suitable processing circuitrysuch as processing circuitry 906. As referred to herein, processingcircuitry should be understood to mean circuitry based on one or moremicroprocessors, microcontrollers, digital signal processors,programmable logic devices, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc., and may includea multi-core processor (e.g., dual-core, quad-core, hexa-core, or anysuitable number of cores) or supercomputer. In some embodiments,processing circuitry may be distributed across multiple separateprocessors or processing units, for example, multiple of the same typeof processing units (e.g., two Intel Core i7 processors) or multipledifferent processors (e.g., an Intel Core i5 processor and an Intel Corei7 processor). In some embodiments, control circuitry 904 executesinstructions for a media guidance application stored in memory (i.e.,storage 908). Specifically, control circuitry 904 may be instructed bythe media guidance application to perform the functions discussed aboveand below. For example, the media guidance application may provideinstructions to control circuitry 904 to generate the media guidancedisplays. In some implementations, any action performed by the controlcircuitry 904 may be based on instructions received from the mediaguidance application.

In client-server based embodiments, control circuitry 904 may includecommunications circuitry suitable for communicating with a guidanceapplication server or other networks or servers. The instructions forcarrying out the above mentioned functionality may be stored on theguidance application server. Communications circuitry may include acable modem, an integrated services digital network (ISDN) modem, adigital subscriber line (DSL) modem, a telephone modem, Ethernet card,or a wireless modem for communications with other equipment, or anyother suitable communications circuitry. Such communications may involvethe Internet or any other suitable communications networks or paths(which is described in more detail in connection with FIG. 10). Inaddition, communications circuitry may include circuitry that enablespeer-to-peer communication of user equipment devices, or communicationof user equipment devices in locations remote from each other (describedin more detail below).

Memory may be an electronic storage device provided as storage 908 thatis part of control circuitry 904. As referred to herein, the phrase“electronic storage device” or “storage device” should be understood tomean any device for storing electronic data, computer software, orfirmware, such as random-access memory, read-only memory, hard drives,optical drives, digital video disc (DVD) recorders, compact disc (CD)recorders, BLU-RAY disc (BD) recorders, BLU-RAY 3D disc recorders,digital video recorders (DVR, sometimes called a personal videorecorder, or PVR), solid state devices, quantum storage devices, gamingconsoles, gaming media, or any other suitable fixed or removable storagedevices, and/or any combination of the same. Storage 908 may be used tostore various types of content described herein as well as mediaguidance data described above. Nonvolatile memory may also be used(e.g., to launch a boot-up routine and other instructions). Cloud-basedstorage, described in relation to FIG. 10, may be used to supplementstorage 908 or instead of storage 908.

Control circuitry 904 may include video generating circuitry and tuningcircuitry, such as one or more analog tuners, one or more MPEG-2decoders or other digital decoding circuitry, high-definition tuners, orany other suitable tuning or video circuits or combinations of suchcircuits. Encoding circuitry (e.g., for converting over-the-air, analog,or digital signals to MPEG signals for storage) may also be provided.Control circuitry 904 may also include scaler circuitry for upconvertingand downconverting content into the preferred output format of thedevice 700. Circuitry 904 may also include digital-to-analog convertercircuitry and analog-to-digital converter circuitry for convertingbetween digital and analog signals. The tuning and encoding circuitrymay be used by the equipment device to receive and to display, to play,or to record content. The tuning and encoding circuitry may also be usedto receive guidance data. The circuitry described herein, including forexample, the tuning, video generating, encoding, decoding, encrypting,decrypting, scaler, and analog/digital circuitry, may be implementedusing software running on one or more general purpose or specializedprocessors. Multiple tuners may be provided to handle simultaneoustuning functions (e.g., watch and record functions, picture-in-picture(PIP) functions, multiple-tuner recording, etc.). If storage 908 isprovided as a separate device from device 700, the tuning and encodingcircuitry (including multiple tuners) may be associated with storage908.

A user may send instructions to control circuitry 904 using user inputinterface 910. User input interface 910 may be any suitable userinterface, such as a remote control, mouse, trackball, keypad, keyboard,touch screen, touchpad, stylus input, joystick, voice recognitioninterface, or other user input interfaces. Display 912 may be providedas a stand-alone device or integrated with other elements of device 700.For example, display 912 may be a touchscreen or touch-sensitivedisplay. In such circumstances, user input interface 910 may beintegrated with or combined with display 912. Display 912 may be one ormore of a monitor, a television, a liquid crystal display (LCD) for amobile device, amorphous silicon display, low temperature poly silicondisplay, electronic ink display, electrophoretic display, active matrixdisplay, electro-wetting display, electrofluidic display, cathode raytube display, light-emitting diode display, electroluminescent display,plasma display panel, high-performance addressing display, thin-filmtransistor display, organic light-emitting diode display,surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED), laser television,carbon nanotubes, quantum dot display, interferometric modulatordisplay, or any other suitable equipment for displaying visual images.In some embodiments, display 912 may be HDTV-capable. In someembodiments, display 912 may be a 3D display, and the interactive mediaguidance application and any suitable content may be displayed in 3D. Avideo card or graphics card may generate the output to the display 912.The video card may offer various functions such as accelerated renderingof 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or theability to connect multiple monitors. The video card may be anyprocessing circuitry described above in relation to control circuitry904. The video card may be integrated with the control circuitry 904.Speakers 914 may be provided as integrated with other elements of device700 or may be stand-alone units. The audio component of videos and othercontent displayed on display 912 may be played through speakers 914. Insome embodiments, the audio may be distributed to a receiver (notshown), which processes and outputs the audio via speakers 914.

The guidance application may be implemented using any suitablearchitecture. For example, it may be a stand-alone applicationwholly-implemented on device 700. In such an approach, instructions ofthe application are stored locally (e.g., in storage 908), and data foruse by the application is downloaded on a periodic basis (e.g., from anout-of-band feed, from an Internet resource, or using another suitableapproach). Control circuitry 904 may retrieve instructions of theapplication from storage 908 and process the instructions to generateany of the displays discussed herein. Based on the processedinstructions, control circuitry 904 may determine what action to performwhen input is received from input interface 910. For example, movementof a cursor on a display up/down may be indicated by the processedinstructions when input interface 910 indicates that an up/down buttonwas selected.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is a client-serverbased application. Data for use by a thick or thin client implemented ondevice 700 is retrieved on-demand by issuing requests to a server remoteto the device 700. In one example of a client-server based guidanceapplication, control circuitry 904 runs a web browser that interpretsweb pages provided by a remote server. For example, the remote servermay store the instructions for the application in a storage device. Theremote server may process the stored instructions using circuitry (e.g.,control circuitry 904) and generate the displays discussed above andbelow. The client device may receive the displays generated by theremote server and may display the content of the displays locally ondevice 700. This way, the processing of the instructions is performedremotely by the server while the resulting displays are provided locallyon device 700. Device 700 may receive inputs from the user via inputinterface 910 and transmit those inputs to the remote server forprocessing and generating the corresponding displays. For example,device 700 may transmit a communication to the remote server indicatingthat an up/down button was selected via input interface 910. The remoteserver may process instructions in accordance with that input andgenerate a display of the application corresponding to the input (e.g.,a display that moves a cursor up/down). The generated display is thentransmitted to device 700 for presentation to the user.

In some embodiments, the media guidance application is downloaded andinterpreted or otherwise run by an interpreter or virtual machine (runby control circuitry 904). In some embodiments, the guidance applicationmay be encoded in the ETV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF), received bycontrol circuitry 904 as part of a suitable feed, and interpreted by auser agent running on control circuitry 904. For example, the guidanceapplication may be an EBIF application. In some embodiments, theguidance application may be defined by a series of JAVA-based files thatare received and run by a local virtual machine or other suitablemiddleware executed by control circuitry 904. In some of suchembodiments (e.g., those employing MPEG-2 or other digital mediaencoding schemes), the guidance application may be, for example, encodedand transmitted in an MPEG-2 object carousel with the MPEG audio andvideo packets of a program.

Device 700 of FIG. 9 can be implemented in system 800 of FIG. 10 as usertelevision equipment 1002, user computer equipment 1004, wireless usercommunications device 1006, or any other type of user equipment suitablefor accessing content, such as a non-portable gaming machine. Forsimplicity, these devices may be referred to herein collectively as userequipment or user equipment devices, and may be substantially similar touser equipment devices described above. User equipment devices, on whicha media guidance application may be implemented, may function as astandalone device or may be part of a network of devices. Variousnetwork configurations of devices may be implemented and are discussedin more detail below.

A user equipment device utilizing at least some of the system featuresdescribed above in connection with FIG. 9 may not be classified solelyas user television equipment 1002, user computer equipment 1004, or awireless user communications device 1006. For example, user televisionequipment 1002 may, like some user computer equipment 1004, beInternet-enabled allowing for access to Internet content, while usercomputer equipment 1004 may, like some user television equipment 1002,include a tuner allowing for access to television programming. The mediaguidance application may have the same layout on various different typesof user equipment or may be tailored to the display capabilities of theuser equipment. For example, on user computer equipment 1004, theguidance application may be provided as a web site accessed by a webbrowser. In another example, the guidance application may be scaled downfor wireless user communications device 1006.

In system 800, there is typically more than one of each type of userequipment device but only one of each is shown in FIG. 10 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing. In addition, each user may utilize morethan one type of user equipment device and also more than one of eachtype of user equipment device.

In some embodiments, a user equipment device (e.g., user televisionequipment 1002, user computer equipment 1004, wireless usercommunications device 1006) may be referred to as a “second screendevice.” For example, a second screen device may supplement contentpresented on a first user equipment device. The content presented on thesecond screen device may be any suitable content that supplements thecontent presented on the first device. In some embodiments, the secondscreen device provides an interface for adjusting settings and displaypreferences of the first device. In some embodiments, the second screendevice is configured for interacting with other second screen devices orfor interacting with a social network. The second screen device can belocated in the same room as the first device, a different room from thefirst device but in the same house or building, or in a differentbuilding from the first device.

The user may also set various settings to maintain consistent mediaguidance application settings across in-home devices and remote devices.Settings include those described herein, as well as channel and programfavorites, programming preferences that the guidance applicationutilizes to make programming recommendations, display preferences, andother desirable guidance settings. For example, if a user sets a channelas a favorite on, for example, the web site www.alltivo.com on theirpersonal computer at their office, the same channel would appear as afavorite on the user's in-home devices (e.g., user television equipmentand user computer equipment) as well as the user's mobile devices, ifdesired. Therefore, changes made on one user equipment device can changethe guidance experience on another user equipment device, regardless ofwhether they are the same or a different type of user equipment device.In addition, the changes made may be based on settings input by a user,as well as user activity monitored by the guidance application.

The user equipment devices may be coupled to communications network1014. Namely, user television equipment 1002, user computer equipment1004, and wireless user communications device 1006 are coupled tocommunications network 1014 via communications paths 1008, 1010, and1012, respectively. Communications network 1014 may be one or morenetworks including the Internet, a mobile phone network, mobile voice ordata network (e.g., a 4G or LTE network), cable network, public switchedtelephone network, or other types of communications network orcombinations of communications networks. Paths 1008, 1010, and 1012 mayseparately or together include one or more communications paths, suchas, a satellite path, a fiber-optic path, a cable path, a path thatsupports Internet communications (e.g., IPTV), free-space connections(e.g., for broadcast or other wireless signals), or any other suitablewired or wireless communications path or combination of such paths. Path1012 is drawn with dotted lines to indicate that in the exemplaryembodiment shown in FIG. 10 it is a wireless path and paths 1008 and1010 are drawn as solid lines to indicate they are wired paths (althoughthese paths may be wireless paths, if desired). Communications with theuser equipment devices may be provided by one or more of thesecommunications paths, but are shown as a single path in FIG. 10 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing.

Although communications paths are not drawn between user equipmentdevices, these devices may communicate directly with each other viacommunication paths, such as those described above in connection withpaths 1008, 1010, and 1012, as well as other short-range point-to-pointcommunication paths, such as USB cables, IEEE 1394 cables, wirelesspaths (e.g., Bluetooth, infrared, IEEE 802-11x, etc.), or othershort-range communication via wired or wireless paths. BLUETOOTH is acertification mark owned by Bluetooth SIG, INC. The user equipmentdevices may also communicate with each other directly through anindirect path via communications network 1014.

System 800 includes user profile database 1013, central exchange 1015,content source 1016, merchant 1017, media guidance data source 1018, andadvertisement provider 1019 coupled to communications network 1014 viacommunication paths. The communication paths used to connect thesources, database, and other entities (hereinafter “source entities”)may include any of the communication paths described above in connectionwith paths 1008, 1010, and 1012. Communications with the above sourceentities may be exchanged over one or more communications paths, but areshown as a single path in FIG. 10 to avoid overcomplicating the drawing.In addition, there may be more than one of each of the source entitiesas mentioned above, but only one of each is shown in FIG. 10 to avoidovercomplicating the drawing. (The different types of each of thesesources are discussed below.) If desired, any two or more of thesesource entities may be integrated as one source device. Althoughcommunications between the source entities with user equipment devices1002, 1004, and 1006 are shown as through communications network 1014,in some embodiments, the source entities may communicate directly withuser equipment devices 1002, 1004, and 1006 via communication paths (notshown) such as those described above in connection with paths 1008,1010, and 1012.

User profile database 1013 may include one or more centralized serversthat aggregate, store, and distribute profile data related to individualusers, or consumers. For example, profile data of users of mediaguidance application may be collected from various interactive mediaguidance application and analyzed by any data aggregation and machinelearning algorithms at a central server. In some embodiments, userprofile data base 1013 may be physically located at the same place as,or is part of, media content source 1016 or media guidance data source1018, or any of the plurality of sources and databases as shown in FIG.10. As discussed in relation to FIGS. 1-8, the account data of aparticular user, such as Amy, may be stored at user profile database1013 and be retrieved by processing circuitry 906 of a user equipment orby similar processing circuitry of a central exchange, such as centralexchange 1015. A media guidance application at central exchange 1015, asdefined previously in relation to FIGS. 1-8, may broker discount dealsbetween a user and a third party advertiser or merchant. In someembodiments, central exchange 1015 may be physically located at the sameplace as, or is part of, media content source 1016 or media guidancedata source 1018, or any other sources or databases described in FIG.10. In some embodiments, media guidance application may cause controlcircuitry 904 to generate for display the various interfaces as shown inFIGS. 1-8, as well as to receive, store, or process inputs from a useror a third party via the Internet. In some embodiments, user profiledatabase 1013 and/or central exchange 1015 may be integrated into eitherone or both of media content source 1016 and media guidance data source1018 in order to provide an integrated media access experience for usersand the third parties.

In some embodiments, the central exchange 1015 may have access toprofile data of users on user profile database 1013 for which the usershave granted explicit permissions. In some other embodiments, thecentral exchange may be informed of the existence of user profile ofsome other users who have not granted central exchange 1015 access,without having actual access to such profiles. In these embodiments,central exchange 1015 may nonetheless request permission from the userswho have not granted it access. When access is eventually granted,central exchange 1015 may then access and compile profile data of theseusers.

Content source 1016 may include one or more types of contentdistribution equipment including a television distribution facility,cable system headend, satellite distribution facility, programmingsources (e.g., television broadcasters, such as NBC, ABC, HBO, etc.),intermediate distribution facilities and/or servers, Internet providers,on-demand media servers, and other content providers. NBC is a trademarkowned by the National Broadcasting Company, Inc., ABC is a trademarkowned by the American Broadcasting Company, Inc., and HBO is a trademarkowned by the Home Box Office, Inc. Content source 1016 may be theoriginator of content (e.g., a television broadcaster, a Webcastprovider, etc.) or may not be the originator of content (e.g., anon-demand content provider, an Internet provider of content of broadcastprograms for downloading, etc.). Content source 1016 may include cablesources, satellite providers, on-demand providers, Internet providers,over-the-top content providers, or other providers of content. Contentsource 1016 may also include a remote media server used to storedifferent types of content (including video content selected by a user),in a location remote from any of the user equipment devices. Systems andmethods for remote storage of content, and providing remotely storedcontent to user equipment are discussed in greater detail in connectionwith Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,761,892, issued Jul. 20, 2010, whichis hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

Merchant 1017 and advertisement provider 1019 may be remote servers of athird party merchant or advertiser that generate targeted advertisementsfor users. In some embodiments, media guidance applications running atmerchant 1017 and/or advertisement provider 1019 may generateadvertisements 110, 120, and 130 for display on user interface 100 ofFIG. 1. In some embodiments, the media guidance applications running atmerchant 1017 and/or advertisement provider 1019 may provide a targetaudience profile, define algorithms for targeting users, and providemaximum, minimum, or actual promotion offers in accordance with thedisclosure of FIGS. 1-8. In some embodiments, merchant 1017 and/oradvertisement provider 1019 may be physically located at the same placeas media content source 1016 or media guidance data source 1018, or maybe integrated into media content source 1016 or media guidance datasource 1018 in order to provide users a more integrated experience.

Media guidance data source 1018 may provide media guidance data, such asthe media guidance data described above. Media guidance data may beprovided to the user equipment devices using any suitable approach. Insome embodiments, the guidance application may be a stand-aloneinteractive television program guide that receives program guide datavia a data feed (e.g., a continuous feed or trickle feed). Programschedule data and other guidance data may be provided to the userequipment on a television channel sideband, using an in-band digitalsignal, using an out-of-band digital signal, or by any other suitabledata transmission technique. Program schedule data and other mediaguidance data may be provided to user equipment on multiple analog ordigital television channels.

In some embodiments, guidance data from media guidance data source 1018may be provided to users' equipment using a client-server approach. Forexample, a user equipment device may pull media guidance data from aserver, or a server may push media guidance data to a user equipmentdevice. In some embodiments, a guidance application client residing onthe user's equipment may initiate sessions with source 1018 to obtainguidance data when needed, e.g., when the guidance data is out of dateor when the user equipment device receives a request from the user toreceive data. Media guidance may be provided to the user equipment withany suitable frequency (e.g., continuously, daily, a user-specifiedperiod of time, a system-specified period of time, in response to arequest from user equipment, etc.). Media guidance data source 1018 mayprovide user equipment devices 1002, 1004, and 1006 the media guidanceapplication itself or software updates for the media guidanceapplication.

In some embodiments, the media guidance data may include viewer data.For example, the viewer data may include current and/or historical useractivity information (e.g., what content the user typically watches,what times of day the user watches content, whether the user interactswith a social network, at what times the user interacts with a socialnetwork to post information, what types of content the user typicallywatches (e.g., pay TV or free TV), mood, brain activity information,etc.). The media guidance data may also include subscription data. Forexample, the subscription data may identify to which sources or servicesa given user subscribes and/or to which sources or services the givenuser has previously subscribed but later terminated access (e.g.,whether the user subscribes to premium channels, whether the user hasadded a premium level of services, whether the user has increasedInternet speed). In some embodiments, the viewer data and/or thesubscription data may identify patterns of a given user for a period ofmore than one year. The media guidance data may include a model (e.g., asurvivor model) used for generating a score that indicates a likelihooda given user will terminate access to a service/source. For example, themedia guidance application may process the viewer data with thesubscription data using the model to generate a value or score thatindicates a likelihood of whether the given user will terminate accessto a particular service or source. In particular, a higher score mayindicate a higher level of confidence that the user will terminateaccess to a particular service or source. Based on the score, the mediaguidance application may generate promotions and advertisements thatentice the user to keep the particular service or source indicated bythe score as one to which the user will likely terminate access.

Media guidance applications may be, for example, stand-aloneapplications implemented on user equipment devices. For example, themedia guidance application may be implemented as software or a set ofexecutable instructions which may be stored in storage 908, and executedby control circuitry 904 of a device 700. In some embodiments, mediaguidance applications may be client-server applications where only aclient application resides on the user equipment device, and serverapplication resides on a remote server. For example, media guidanceapplications may be implemented partially as a client application oncontrol circuitry 904 of device 700 and partially on a remote server asa server application (e.g., media guidance data source 1018) running oncontrol circuitry of the remote server. When executed by controlcircuitry of the remote server (such as media guidance data source1018), the media guidance application may instruct the control circuitryto generate the guidance application displays and transmit the generateddisplays to the user equipment devices. The server application mayinstruct the control circuitry of the media guidance data source 1018 totransmit data for storage on the user equipment. The client applicationmay instruct control circuitry of the receiving user equipment togenerate the guidance application displays.

Content and/or media guidance data delivered to user equipment devices1002, 1004, and 1006 may be over-the-top (OTT) content. OTT contentdelivery allows Internet-enabled user devices, including any userequipment device described above, to receive content that is transferredover the Internet, including any content described above, in addition tocontent received over cable or satellite connections. OTT content isdelivered via an Internet connection provided by an Internet serviceprovider (ISP), but a third party distributes the content. The ISP maynot be responsible for the viewing abilities, copyrights, orredistribution of the content, and may only transfer IP packets providedby the OTT content provider. Examples of OTT content providers includeYOUTUBE, NETFLIX, and HULU, which provide audio and video via IPpackets. Youtube is a trademark owned by Google Inc., Netflix is atrademark owned by Netflix Inc., and Hulu is a trademark owned by Hulu,LLC. OTT content providers may additionally or alternatively providemedia guidance data described above. In addition to content and/or mediaguidance data, providers of OTT content can distribute media guidanceapplications (e.g., web-based applications or cloud-based applications),or the content can be displayed by media guidance applications stored onthe user equipment device.

Media guidance system 800 is intended to illustrate a number ofapproaches, or network configurations, by which user equipment devicesand sources of content and guidance data may communicate with each otherfor the purpose of accessing content and providing media guidance. Theembodiments described herein may be applied in any one or a subset ofthese approaches, or in a system employing other approaches fordelivering content and providing media guidance. The following fourapproaches provide specific illustrations of the generalized example ofFIG. 10.

In one approach, user equipment devices may communicate with each otherwithin a home network. User equipment devices can communicate with eachother directly via short-range point-to-point communication schemesdescribed above, via indirect paths through a hub or other similardevice provided on a home network, or via communications network 1014.Each of the multiple individuals in a single home may operate differentuser equipment devices on the home network. As a result, it may bedesirable for various media guidance information or settings to becommunicated between the different user equipment devices. For example,it may be desirable for users to maintain consistent media guidanceapplication settings on different user equipment devices within a homenetwork, as described in greater detail in Ellis et al., U.S. PatentPublication No. 2005/0251827, filed Jul. 11, 2005. Different types ofuser equipment devices in a home network may also communicate with eachother to transmit content. For example, a user may transmit content fromuser computer equipment to a portable video player or portable musicplayer.

In a second approach, users may have multiple types of user equipment bywhich they access content and obtain media guidance. For example, someusers may have home networks that are accessed by in-home and mobiledevices. Users may control in-home devices via a media guidanceapplication implemented on a remote device. For example, users mayaccess an online media guidance application on a merchant portal via apersonal computer at their office, or a mobile device such as a PDA orweb-enabled mobile telephone. The user may set various settings (e.g.,recordings, reminders, or other settings) on the online guidanceapplication to control the user's in-home equipment. The online guidemay control the user's equipment directly, or by communicating with amedia guidance application on the user's in-home equipment. Varioussystems and methods for user equipment devices communicating, where theuser equipment devices are in locations remote from each other, isdiscussed in, for example, Ellis et al., U.S. Pat. No. 8,046,801, issuedOct. 25, 2011, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in itsentirety.

In a third approach, users of user equipment devices inside and outsidea home can use their media guidance application to communicate directlywith content source 1016 to access content. Specifically, within a home,users of user television equipment 1002 and user computer equipment 1004may access the media guidance application to navigate among and locatedesirable content. Users may also access the media guidance applicationoutside of the home using wireless user communications devices 1006 tonavigate among and locate desirable content.

In a fourth approach, user equipment devices may operate in a cloudcomputing environment to access cloud services. In a cloud computingenvironment, various types of computing services for content sharing,storage or distribution (e.g., video sharing sites or social networkingsites) are provided by a collection of network-accessible computing andstorage resources, referred to as “the cloud.” For example, the cloudcan include a collection of server computing devices, which may belocated centrally or at distributed locations, that provide cloud-basedservices to various types of users and devices connected via a networksuch as the Internet via communications network 1014. These cloudresources may include one or more content sources 1016 and one or moremedia guidance data sources 1018. In addition or in the alternative, theremote computing sites may include other user equipment devices, such asuser television equipment 1002, user computer equipment 1004, andwireless user communications device 1006. For example, the other userequipment devices may provide access to a stored copy of a video or astreamed video. In such embodiments, user equipment devices may operatein a peer-to-peer manner without communicating with a central server.

The cloud provides access to services, such as content storage, contentsharing, or social networking services, among other examples, as well asaccess to any content described above, for user equipment devices.Services can be provided in the cloud through cloud computing serviceproviders, or through other providers of online services. For example,the cloud-based services can include a content storage service, acontent sharing site, a social networking site, or other services viawhich user-sourced content is distributed for viewing by others onconnected devices. These cloud-based services may allow a user equipmentdevice to store content to the cloud and to receive content from thecloud rather than storing content locally and accessing locally-storedcontent.

A user may use various content capture devices, such as camcorders,digital cameras with video mode, audio recorders, mobile phones, andhandheld computing devices, to record content. The user can uploadcontent to a content storage service on the cloud either directly, forexample, from user computer equipment 1004 or wireless usercommunications device 1006 having content capture feature.Alternatively, the user can first transfer the content to a userequipment device, such as user computer equipment 1004. The userequipment device storing the content uploads the content to the cloudusing a data transmission service on communications network 1014. Insome embodiments, the user equipment device itself is a cloud resource,and other user equipment devices can access the content directly fromthe user equipment device on which the user stored the content.

Cloud resources may be accessed by a user equipment device using, forexample, a web browser, a media guidance application, a desktopapplication, a mobile application, and/or any combination of accessapplications of the same. The user equipment device may be a cloudclient that relies on cloud computing for application delivery, or theuser equipment device may have some functionality without access tocloud resources. For example, some applications running on the userequipment device may be cloud applications, i.e., applications deliveredas a service over the Internet, while other applications may be storedand run on the user equipment device. In some embodiments, a user devicemay receive content from multiple cloud resources simultaneously. Forexample, a user device can stream audio from one cloud resource whiledownloading content from a second cloud resource. Or a user device candownload content from multiple cloud resources for more efficientdownloading. In some embodiments, user equipment devices can use cloudresources for processing operations such as the processing operationsperformed by processing circuitry 906 described in relation to FIG. 9.

FIG. 9 presents an illustrative flowchart of a process for allowing auser to grant or deny a third party access to different portions of theuser's profile characteristics, in accordance with some embodiments ofthe disclosure. In some embodiments, the process may be encoded on tonon-transitory storage medium (e.g., storage device 908) as a set ofinstructions to be decoded and executed by processing circuitry (e.g.,processing circuitry 906). Processing circuitry may in turn provideinstructions to other sub-circuits contained within control circuitry904, such as the tuning, video generating, encoding, decoding,encrypting, decrypting, scaling, analog/digital conversion circuitry,and the like.

In FIG. 11, at 1110, a media guidance application may cause controlcircuitry of a system, such as control circuitry 904 located at centralexchange 1015 or third party merchant 1017, to compare a plurality oflayers of profile characteristics associated with a user to atarget-audience profile submitted by a third party. In some embodiments,the third party may be merchant 1017 or advertisement provider 1019, andmay submit the target-audience profile, such as those defined ininterface 300 of FIG. 3, using a third party device located at merchant1017 or advertisement provider 1019, which may be similar to device 700in structure.

At 1120, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to determine whether a first layer of the plurality of layers matchesthe target-audience profile. In response to determining that the firstlayer does not match the target-audience profile, the media guidanceapplication may cause control circuitry 904 to loop at 1120. In someembodiments, the media guidance application may have insufficientinformation about the user at the onset of process 1100, and may make1110 and 1120 optional and may perform them at a later opportunity.Instead, in such embodiments, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 904 to generate for display an interface that allowsthe user the enter her profile characteristics in exchange for discountopportunities, such as the interface at 1160, as will be discussedbelow.

At 1130, in response to determining that the first layer matches thetarget-audience profile, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 904 to calculate an optimal promotion offer from thethird party based on the first layer of profile characteristics, such asa Basic Layer 210 as shown in FIG. 2. At 1140, the media guidanceapplication may cause control circuitry 904 to generate for display theoptimal promotion offer to the user, such as the optimal promotion offerdisplayed in advertisement 120 of FIG. 1.

At 1150, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to receive a first selection of the optimal promotion offer from theuser, such as advertisement 120. At 1160, the media guidance applicationmay cause control circuitry 904 to, in response to receiving the firstselection of the optimal promotion offer, generate for display the firstlayer of profile characteristics, each profile characteristic of thefirst layer having a corresponding selectable option to grant the thirdparty, such as merchant 1017, access to the corresponding profilecharacteristic of the user.

At 1170, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to receive a second selection from the user to grant the third partyaccess to a subset of the profile characteristics within the firstlayer, such as the profile characteristics selected on user interface200 of FIG. 2. At 1180, the media guidance application may cause controlcircuitry 904 to calculate an actual promotion offer from the thirdparty for the user based on the subset of profile characteristics whichthe user has granted the third party access to, such as those calculatedby merchant 1017, the actual promotion offer being no greater than theoptimal promotion offer.

At 1190, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to generate for display the actual promotion offer, such as actualpromotion offer shown in advertisement 420 of FIG. 4, to the user.

FIG. 12 depicts an illustrative flowchart of process 1200 for enabling auser to exchange portions of profile characteristics for promotionoffers from a third party, and enabling the third party to target theuser more effectively, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. In some embodiments, this process may be encoded on tonon-transitory storage medium (e.g., storage device 908) as a set ofinstructions to be decoded and executed by processing circuitry (e.g.,processing circuitry 906). Processing circuitry may in turn provideinstructions to other sub-circuits contained within control circuitry904, such as the tuning, video generating, encoding, decoding,encrypting, decrypting, scaling, analog/digital conversion circuitry,and the like.

At 1202 of process 1200, a media guidance application may cause controlcircuitry 904 at central exchange 1015 or merchant 1017 to receivelayers of profile characteristics from a user, such as by having theuser answer questions about her profile data or polling profileinformation from one or more sources, e.g., user profile database 1013.At 1204, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to receive target-audience profile from a third party, such as merchant1017 or advertisement provider 1019, by way of interface 300 as shown inFIG. 3.

At 1206, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to compare the layers of profile characteristics to the target-audienceprofile. At 1208, the media guidance application may cause controlcircuitry 904 to determine whether a first layer, such as Basic Layer210, matches the target-audience profile. In response to determiningthat the first layer does not match the target-audience profile, themedia guidance application may cause control circuitry 904 to loop at1208. However, in response to determining that the first layer matchesthe target-audience profile, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 904 to proceed to 1210 and calculate an optimalpromotion offer assuming the user has granted the third party access toa predetermined subset of profile characteristics within the layer. Forexample, advertisement 120, which indicates an optimal promotion offerof “up to $5.00 off,” may be calculated assuming the user has grantedthe third party merchant or advertiser access to all her profilecharacteristics.

At 1212, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to generate for display the optimal promotion offer to the user. Forexample, control circuitry 904 of central exchange 1015 may generate fordisplay advertisement 120 to the user on user interface 100. At 1214,the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904 toreceive a user selection to select or dismiss the optimal promotionoffer. In response to receiving a user selection to dismiss the optimalpromotion offer, at 1216, the media guidance application may causecontrol circuitry 904 to reduce the probability of generating futurepromotion offers from the third party. If, however, control circuitry904 receives user selection to select the optimal promotion offer, suchas advertisement 120, the media guidance application may cause controlcircuitry 904 to generate for display the first layer withincorresponding selectable options to the user, such as the Basic Layer210 on user interface 200, at 1218.

At 1220, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to receive user selection to grant third party access to a subset ofprofile characteristics within the first layer, such as profilecharacteristics “Gender,” “Age,” and “Education” as indicated on userinterface 200. At 1222, control circuitry 904 may extract targetcharacteristics from the target-audience profile, such as targetcharacteristics “Age” 310, “Education” 330, and “Sports Preference” 340,as indicated on interface 300. At 1224, the media guidance applicationmay cause control circuitry 904 to count the number of matches betweenthe selected subset and the extract target characteristics. In the aboveexample, the number of matches is two—corresponding to “Age” and“Education.”

At 1226, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to calculate a matching score based on the number of matches. Thematching score may be calculated using any of a plurality of algorithmsas described in the present disclosure. For example, at 1228, the mediaguidance application may cause control circuitry 904 to calculate thematching score based on a weighted average of each matching profilecharacteristic in the subset. At 1230, the media guidance applicationmay cause control circuitry 904 to compare the matching score to amaximum matching score, which corresponds to the optimal promotionoffer, to calculate a percentage value. At 1232, the media guidanceapplication may cause control circuitry 904 to multiply the percentagevalue with the optimal promotion offer to obtain an actual promotionoffer specifically for the user.

At 1234, the media guidance application may cause control circuitry 904to generate for display the actual promotion offer, e.g., updatedadvertisement 420, to the user, using display 912 of a user equipmentdevice such as user computer equipment 1004. Although the abovedisclosure uses embodiments which are directed to providing higherdiscounts for users that match more closely to the target-audienceprofile as set up by the third party, it is understood that the conversecould be true—that is, a user who is more closely matched with thetarget-audience profile might be offered a lower discount, whereas auser who is further from the “ideal user” as defined by thetarget-audience profile might be given a higher discount. Onejustification for this embodiment is that users who are similar to thetarget-audience profile may harbor more affinity to the products andservices offered by the third party business, even with less promotionoffered. In other words, these users might not be as discount-sensitiveto users who are not similar to the target audience. These and otherembodiments are understood to be well within the teachings of thecurrent disclosure.

FIG. 13 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in generating aquery for requesting information that will enable a determination ofwhether a user definitively fits or does not fit a target audienceprofile, in accordance with some embodiments of the disclosure. Process1300 may be executed by control circuitry 904 (FIG. 9) as instructed bythe media guidance application. Control circuitry 1004 may beimplemented on user equipment 1002, 1004, and/or 1006 (FIG. 10). Inaddition, one or more steps of process 1300 may be incorporated into orcombined with one or more steps of any other process or embodiment.

Process 1300 begins at 1302 where control circuitry 904 determines anidentity of a user accessing a merchant portal. For example, controlcircuitry 904 may identify user 102 as Amy, in manners describedpreviously with respect to FIG. 1. Process 1300 continues to 1304 wherecontrol circuitry 904 retrieves, from a public database, profileinformation about the user comprising demographic information about theuser, preferences of the user, and behavioral information about theuser. For example, control circuitry 904 may retrieve profileinformation about the user from a local public database located atstorage 908 or a remote public database, accessible via communicationsnetwork 614, located at user profile database 1013 and/or media guidancedata source 1018. Process 1300 continues to 1306 where control circuitry904 compares the profile information to information of a plurality oftarget audience profiles of a merchant corresponding to the merchantportal. As an illustrative example, control circuitry 904 may retrieve,for a sporting goods store called REI, target audience profiles forspecific good and service that REI sells. Control circuitry 904 mayretrieve the target audience profiles from merchant 1017 and/or mediaguidance data source 1018.

Process 1300 continues to 1308 where control circuitry 904 determines,based on the comparing, whether the profile information comprises enoughinformation to determine whether the user definitively fits or does notfit within each target audience profile of the plurality of targetaudience profiles. As an illustrative example, control circuitry 904 maycompare user profile information with the target audience profile forskiing equipment to determine whether the user fits or does not fit thetarget audience profile for skiing equipment. Manners in which controlcircuitry 904 may perform this determination described previously withrespect to FIG. 1 are applicable here. Process 1300 continues to 1310where control circuitry 904, for a target audience profile for which itis determined that there is not enough information to determine that theuser definitively fits or does not fit within the target audienceprofile, generates a query for the user that requests information thatwill enable a determination that the user definitively fits or does notfit within the target audience profile. Following from the exampleabove, control circuitry 904 may generate a query that asks “Do youenjoy skiing?” in order to determine whether the user fits or does notfit the target audience profile for skiing equipment. Control circuitry904 may generate for display the query on any of user televisionequipment 1002, user computer equipment 1004 and/or wireless usercommunications device 1006.

FIG. 14 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in generating aquery for requesting information that will enable a target audienceprofile to be classified either into a fits the user subset or does notfit the user subset, in accordance with some embodiments of thedisclosure. Process 1400 may be executed by control circuitry 904 (FIG.9) as instructed by the media guidance application. Control circuitry904 may be implemented on user equipment 1002, 1004, and/or 1006 (FIG.10). In addition, one or more steps of process 1400 may be incorporatedinto or combined with one or more steps of any other process orembodiment.

Process 1400 begins at 1402 where control circuitry 904 determines anidentity of a user accessing a merchant portal. For example, controlcircuitry 904 may identify, based on input received via user inputinterface 910 and/or information retrieved from user profile database1013 and/or media guidance data source 1018, user 102 as Amy. Manners inwhich control circuitry 904 may perform this identification describedpreviously with respect to FIG. 1 are applicable here. Process 1400continues to 1404 where control circuitry 904 accesses a databaseaccessible to the merchant comprising a profile corresponding to theuser. For example, control circuitry 904 may access a database locatedlocally at storage 908 or remotely user profile database 1013 and/ormedia guidance data source 1018. Process 1400 continues to 1406 wherecontrol circuitry 904 retrieves, from the profile of the database,information about the user, where the information comprises (1)demographic information about the user, (2) preferences of the user, and(3) behavioral information about the user.

Process 1400 continues to 1408 where control circuitry 904 retrieves aplurality of target audience profiles associated with a merchantcorresponding to the merchant portal. As an illustrative example,control circuitry 904 may retrieve, for a sporting goods store calledREI, target audience profiles for specific good and service that REIsells (e.g., target audience profile for skiing, target audience profilefor vacation packages, target audience profile for tennis equipment).Control circuitry 904 may retrieve the target audience profiles frommerchant 1017 and/or media guidance data source 1018. Process 1400continues to 1410 where control circuitry 904 compares the informationabout the user to information of each of the target audience profiles ofthe plurality of target audience profiles.

Process 1400 continues to 1412 where control circuitry 904 determines,based on the comparing, a first subset of target audience profiles ofthe plurality of target audience profiles where a first threshold amountof the information about the user matches the information of arespective target audience profile. As an illustrative example, controlcircuitry 904 may determine, based on information about the user thatindicates that the user enjoys playing tennis and target audienceprofile for tennis equipment, that the user is a good candidate toadvertise the tennis equipment to. Process 1400 continues to 1414 wherecontrol circuitry 904 determines, based on the comparing, a secondsubset of target audience profiles of the plurality of target audienceprofiles where a second threshold amount of the information about theuser is contradictory to the information of the respective targetaudience profile. For example, the information about the user mayindicate that the user consistently declines vacation packages.Accordingly, control circuitry 904 may the target audience profile forthe vacation package to the second subset.

Process 1400 continues to 1416 where control circuitry 904 generates athird subset of the target audience profiles by filtering out the firstsubset of the target audience profiles and filtering out the secondsubset of the target audience profiles from the plurality of targetaudience profiles. Following from the previous example, controlcircuitry 904 may filter out target audience profile for skiing andtarget audience profile for vacation packages. For example, controlcircuitry 904 does not have enough information to determine whether theuser is a good candidate to be offered a promotion about skiingequipment, and control circuitry 904 may include target audience profilefor the skiing equipment in the third subset. Process 1400 continues to1418 where control circuitry 904 generates a query for the user thatrequests information that will enable a given target audience profile ofthe third subset to be added to the first subset or to be added to thesecond subset. Following from the example above, control circuitry 904may generate a query “Do you enjoy skiing?” for determining whether theuser fits or does not fit the target audience profile for skiingequipment. Control circuitry 904 may generate for display the query onany of user television equipment 1002, user computer equipment 1004and/or wireless user communications device 1006.

FIG. 15 is a flowchart of illustrative steps involved in determining,based on a user's response to a promotion associated with a targetaudience profile, another promotion associated with another targetaudience profile for presentation to the user, in accordance with someembodiments of the disclosure. Process 1500 may be executed by controlcircuitry 904 (FIG. 9) as instructed by the media guidance application.Control circuitry 904 may be implemented on user equipment 1002, 1004,and/or 1006 (FIG. 10). In addition, one or more steps of process 1500may be incorporated into or combined with one or more steps of any otherprocess or embodiment.

Process 1500 begins at 1502 where control circuitry 904 monitors whethera user acts on a promotion. Process 1500 continues to 1504 where controlcircuitry 904 detects that a user acted on the promotion. For example,control circuitry 904 may detect that a user has acted on the promotionupon receiving an input via user input interface 910. Process 1500continues to 1506 where control circuitry 904 determines a set ofattributes that correspond to a manner in which the user acted on thepromotion. As an illustrative example, the user may respond to apromotion for ski equipment by purchasing the ski equipment. Process1500 continues to 1508 where control circuitry 904 compares the set ofattributes to attributes of other target audience profiles of the thirdsubset. Control circuitry 904 may retrieve the other target audienceprofiles of the third subset from merchant 1017 and/or media guidancedata source 1018.

Process 1500 continues to 1510 where control circuitry 904 determines,based on comparing the set of attributes to the attributes of othertarget audience profiles of the third subset, a fourth subset of targetaudience profiles. For example, control circuitry 904 may determineski-equipment related target audience profiles as a fourth subset.Process 1500 continues to 1512 where control circuitry 904 generates aquery for the user that requests further information that will enable agiven target audience profile of the fourth subset to be added to thefirst subset or to be added to the second subset. For example, controlcircuitry 904 may generate a query (displayed on any of user equipment1002, 1004 and 1006) such as “Did you buy the skiing equipment foryourself or for a family member?” to determine whether a target audienceprofile for an avid skier matches the user.

Process 1500 continues to 1514 where control circuitry 904 receives areply to the query that contains the further information. Following fromthe example above, control circuitry 904 may receive, via user inputinterface 910, a query reply of “For a family member.” Process 1500continues to 1516 where control circuitry 904 accesses a privatedatabase containing available information about the user (e.g., andupdate the available information about the user to include the furtherinformation. For example, control circuitry 904 may update the availableinformation about the user, stored at any of merchant 1017, mediaguidance data source 618 and/or user profile database 613, to indicatethat the user is not interested in ski equipment for himself.

Process 1500 continues to 1518 where control circuitry 904 determineswhether a strength of association between the updated availableinformation and additional information in a knowledge graph is greaterthan a threshold strength of association. As previously discussed, theknowledge graph may be stored in a local database, such as merchant'sprivate database, or a remote database in the cloud, such as userprofile database 1013. Control circuitry 904 may retrieve the knowledgegraph from the database to make the aforementioned determination. Forexample, control circuitry 904 may consult the knowledge graph stored inthe database to determine that the ski equipment purchased by the userwas for a male child. Control circuitry 904 may determine, based on thetype of ski equipment purchased, that the user has a male child. Controlcircuitry 904 may determine whether strength of association between theupdated available information and additional information that the userhas a male child is greater than a threshold strength of association.If, at 1518, control circuitry 904 determines the strength ofassociation between the updated available information and the additionalinformation in a knowledge graph is greater than the threshold strengthof association, process 1500 continues to 1520. At 1520, controlcircuitry 904 updates the available information about the user toinclude the additional information. For example, control circuitry 904may update the available information about the user to include that theuser has a male child.

Process 1500 continues to 1522 where control circuitry 904 determineswhether the updated available information about the user has an amountof information that matches information of the given target audienceprofile of the fourth subset that meets or exceeds the first thresholdamount of information. Process 1500 also continues to 1522 if, at 1518,control circuitry 904 determines the strength of association between theupdated available information and the additional information in aknowledge graph is not greater than the threshold strength ofassociation. For example, control circuitry 904 may determine whetheramount of information in the updated available information about theuser that matches a target audience profile for male child tennisequipment.

If, at 1522, control circuitry 904 determines that the updated availableinformation about the user does not have an amount of information thatmatches information of the given target audience profile of the fourthsubset that meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information,process 1500 reverts to 1512. For example, process 1500 may revert to1512 upon control circuitry 904 determining that the updated availableinformation about the user does not match a target audience profile formale child tennis equipment.

If, at 1522, control circuitry 904 determines that the updated availableinformation about the user has an amount of information that matchesinformation of the given target audience profile of the fourth subsetthat meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information, process1500 continues to 1524. At 1524, control circuitry 904 includes thegiven target audience profile of the fourth subset in the first subset.Process 1500 continues to 1526 where control circuitry 904 provides apromotion to the user for a product or service corresponding to thegiven target audience profile of the fourth subset. For example, controlcircuitry 904 may determine that the matches the target audience profilefor male child tennis equipment and include the target audience profilefor male child tennis equipment in the first subset. Control circuitry904 may then provide a promotion for male child tennis equipment.Process 1500 then reverts to 1502.

It should be noted that processes 1300-1500 or any step thereof could beperformed on, or provided by, any of the devices shown in FIGS. 9-10.For example, any of processes 1300-1500 may be executed by controlcircuitry 904 (FIG. 9) as instructed by the media guidance applicationimplemented on user equipment 1002, 1004, and/or 1006 (FIG. 10). Inaddition, one or more steps of process 1300-1500 may be incorporatedinto or combined with one or more steps of any other process orembodiment.

It is contemplated that the steps or descriptions of FIGS. 11-15 may beused with any other embodiment of this disclosure. In addition, thesteps and descriptions described in relation to FIGS. 11-15 may be donein alternative orders or in parallel to further the purposes of thisdisclosure. For example, each of these steps may be performed in anyorder or in parallel or substantially simultaneously to reduce lag orincrease the speed of the system or method.

As referred herein, the term “in response to” refers to initiated as aresult of. For example, a first action being performed in response to asecond action may include interstitial steps between the first actionand the second action. As referred herein, the term “directly inresponse to” refers to caused by. For example, a first action beingperformed directly in response to a second action may not includeinterstitial steps between the first action and the second action.

The processes discussed above are intended to be illustrative and notlimiting. One skilled in the art would appreciate that the steps of theprocesses discussed herein may be omitted, modified, combined, and/orrearranged, and any additional steps may be performed without departingfrom the scope of the disclosure. More generally, the above disclosureis meant to be exemplary and not limiting. Only the claims that followare meant to set bounds as to what the present disclosure includes.Furthermore, it should be noted that the features and limitationsdescribed in any one embodiment may be applied to any other embodimentherein, and flowcharts or examples relating to one embodiment may becombined with any other embodiment in a suitable manner, done indifferent orders, or done in parallel. In addition, the systems andmethods described herein may be performed in real time. It should alsobe noted, the systems and/or methods described above may be applied to,or used in accordance with, other systems and/or methods.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for identifying information that is not publicly available about users for use in generating content recommendations, the method comprising: determining an identity of a user accessing a content provider portal; accessing a database accessible to a content provider comprising a profile corresponding to the user; retrieving, from the profile of the database, information about the user, wherein the information comprises (1) demographic information about the user, (2) preferences of the user, or (3) behavioral information about the user; retrieving a plurality of target audience profiles associated with the content provider corresponding to the content provider portal; comparing the information about the user to information of each of the target audience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles; determining, based on the comparing, a first subset of target audience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles where a first threshold amount of the information about the user matches the information of a respective target audience profile; determining, based on the comparing, a second subset of target audience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles where a second threshold amount of the information about the user is contradictory to the information of the respective target audience profile; generating a third subset of the target audience profiles by filtering out the first subset of the target audience profiles and filtering out the second subset of the target audience profiles from the plurality of target audience profiles; extracting a plurality of characteristics of a given target audience profile in the third subset of the target audience profiles, the plurality of characteristics comprising two or more of age, gender, education, address, shopping preference, or sports preference; determining, for each characteristic of the plurality of characteristics, a sub-score corresponding to the characteristic based on the information about the user: computing a matching score for the given target audience profile based on the sub-scores for each characteristic of the plurality of characteristics; identifying a plurality of sub-scores for an additional characteristic and determining, based on the plurality of sub-scores, that obtaining a value for the additional characteristic would change the matching score for the given target audience profile such that the given target audience profile could be added to the first subset or to be added to the second subset; generating a query for the user that requests information corresponding to the additional characteristic; in response to receiving a reply to the query, updating the user profile information to include the additional characteristic and computing an updated matching score for the given target audience profile using the sub-scores for each of the plurality of characteristics and an additional sub-score computed from a value of the additional characteristic received in the reply to the query; determining, based on the updated matching score, that the updated user profile information matches with the given target audience profile and, in response, selecting a content item of a plurality of content items based on the given target audience profile; calculating a promotional offer for the selected content item based on the updated user profile information; and generating and transmitting the selected content item and the corresponding calculated promotion offer.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: adding the information about the user to a private database accessible to the content provider; determining a kind of information of the reply by determining whether the reply includes demographic information, preference information, or behavioral information; and updating the information about the user by adding the information of the reply to, in the private database, either the demographic information about the user, the preference information about the user, or the behavioral information about the user based on the determination of the kind of information of the reply.
 3. The method of claim 2, further comprising: accessing a knowledge graph; determining, based on information of the knowledge graph, a strength of association between the information of the reply and additional information; and in response to determining that the strength of association exceeds a threshold strength of association, adding the additional information to the private database.
 4. The method of claim 2, further comprising: determining whether the updated user profile information about the user has an amount of information that matches information of the given target audience profile of the third subset that meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information; and in response to determining that the updated information has an amount of information that matches information of the given target audience profile of the third subset that meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information, providing a content recommendation to the user for a product or service corresponding to the given target audience profile of the third subset.
 5. The method of claim 4, further comprising: monitoring whether the user acts on the content recommendation; and in response to determining that the user acts on the content recommendation, updating the behavioral information in the private database.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein updating the behavioral information in the private database comprises: accessing a knowledge graph; determining a strength of association between the updated behavioral information and additional behavioral information in the knowledge graph; and in response to determining that the strength of association exceeds a threshold strength of association, further updating the behavioral information to include the additional behavioral information.
 7. The method of claim 5, further comprising: further in response to determining that the user acts on the content recommendation, determining a set of attributes that correspond to a manner in which the user acted on the content recommendation; comparing the set of attributes to attributes of other target audience profiles of the third subset; determining, based on comparing the set of attributes to the attributes of other target audience profiles of the third subset, a fourth subset of target audience profiles; and generating another query for the user that requests further information that will enable a given target audience profile of the fourth subset to be added to the first subset or to be added to the second subset.
 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising: comparing the set of attributes to attributes of target audience profiles of the first subset; determining whether a threshold amount of the set of attributes do not match the attributes of a given target audience profile of the first subset; and in response to determining that the threshold amount of the set of attributes do not match the attributes of the given target audience profile of the first subset, removing the given target audience profile from the first subset and adding the given target audience profile to the second subset.
 9. The method of claim 5, further comprising: determining, based on the monitoring, that the user fails to act on the content recommendation during a threshold period of time; and in response to determining that the user fails to act on the content recommendation during the threshold period of time, adding the given target audience profile of the third subset to the second subset, and removing the given target audience profile of the third subset from the third subset.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the query is provided to the user by way of a set-top box.
 11. A system for identifying information that is not publicly available about users for use in generating content recommendations, the system comprising: communications circuitry; and control circuitry configured to: determine an identity of a user accessing a content provider portal; access, using the communications circuitry, a database accessible to a content provider comprising a profile corresponding to the user; retrieve, from the profile of the database, information about the user, wherein the information comprises (1) demographic information about the user, (2) preferences of the user, or (3) behavioral information about the user; retrieve a plurality of target audience profiles associated with the content provider corresponding to the content provider portal; compare the information about the user to information of each of the target audience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles; determine, based on the comparing, a first subset of target audience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles where a first threshold amount of the information about the user matches the information of a respective target audience profile; determine, based on the comparing, a second subset of target audience profiles of the plurality of target audience profiles where a second threshold amount of the information about the user is contradictory to the information of the respective target audience profile; generate a third subset of the target audience profiles by filtering out the first subset of the target audience profiles and filtering out the second subset of the target audience profiles from the plurality of target audience profiles; extract a plurality of characteristics of a given target audience profile in the third subset of the target audience profiles, the plurality of characteristics comprising two or more of age, gender, education, address, shopping preference, or sports preference; determine, for each characteristic of the plurality of characteristics, a sub-score corresponding to the characteristic based on the information about the user: compute a matching score for the given target audience profile based on the sub-scores for each characteristic of the plurality of characteristics; identify a plurality of sub-scores for an additional characteristic and determining, based on the plurality of sub-scores, that obtaining a value for the additional characteristic would change the matching score for the given target audience profile such that the given target audience profile could be added to the first subset or to be added to the second subset; generate a query for the user that requests information corresponding to the additional characteristic; in response to receiving a reply to the query, update the user profile information to include the additional characteristic and compute an updated matching score for the given target audience profile using the sub-scores for each of the plurality of characteristics and an additional sub-score computed from a value of the additional characteristic received in the reply to the query; determine, based on the updated matching score, that the updated user profile information matches with the given target audience profile and, in response, select a content item of a plurality of content items based on the given target audience profile; calculate a promotional offer for the selected content item based on the updated user profile information; and generated and transmit the selected content item and the corresponding calculated promotion offer.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: add the information about the user to a private database accessible to the content provider; determine a kind of information of the reply by determining whether the reply includes demographic information, preference information, or behavioral information; and update the information about the user by adding the information of the reply to, in the private database, either the demographic information about the user, the preference information about the user, or the behavioral information about the user based on the determination of the kind of information of the reply.
 13. The system of claim 12, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: access a knowledge graph; determine, based on information of the knowledge graph, a strength of association between the information of the reply and additional information; and in response to determining that the strength of association exceeds a threshold strength of association, add the additional information to the private database.
 14. The system of claim 12, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: determine whether the updated user profile information has an amount of information that matches information of the given target audience profile of the third subset that meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information; and in response to determining that the updated information about the user has an amount of information that matches information of the given target audience profile of the third subset that meets or exceeds the first threshold amount of information, provide a content recommendation to the user for a product or service corresponding to the given target audience profile of the third subset.
 15. The system of claim 14, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: monitor whether the user acts on the content recommendation; and in response to determining that the user acts on the content recommendation, update the behavioral information in the private database.
 16. The system of claim 15, wherein the control circuitry is further configured, when updating the behavioral information in the private database, to: access a knowledge graph; determine a strength of association between the updated behavioral information and additional behavioral information in the knowledge graph; and in response to determining that the strength of association exceeds a threshold strength of association, further update the behavioral information to include the additional behavioral information.
 17. The system of claim 15, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: further in response to determining that the user acts on the content recommendation, determine a set of attributes that correspond to a manner in which the user acted on the content recommendation; compare the set of attributes to attributes of other target audience profiles of the third subset; determine, based on comparing the set of attributes to the attributes of other target audience profiles of the third subset, a fourth subset of target audience profiles; and generate another query for the user that requests further information that will enable a given target audience profile of the fourth subset to be added to the first subset or to be added to the second subset.
 18. The system of claim 17, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: compare the set of attributes to attributes of target audience profiles of the first subset; determine whether a threshold amount of the set of attributes do not match the attributes of a given target audience profile of the first subset; and in response to determining that the threshold amount of the set of attributes do not match the attributes of the given target audience profile of the first subset, remove the given target audience profile from the first subset and add the given target audience profile to the second subset.
 19. The system of claim 15, wherein the control circuitry is further configured to: determine, based on the monitoring, that the user fails to act on the content recommendation during a threshold period of time; and in response to determining that the user fails to act on the content recommendation during the threshold period of time, add the given target audience profile of the third subset to the second subset, and removing the given target audience profile of the third subset from the third subset.
 20. The system of claim 11, wherein the query is provided to the user by way of a set-top box. 